


Till My Watch Tics 1

by hypnoidvoid



Series: Reddie Fairytales [2]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Alice in Wonderland Fusion, Angst, Blood and Gore, Fluff, Gay, Kissing, M/M, Reddie, Reddie Fairytales, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-07 14:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15221525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypnoidvoid/pseuds/hypnoidvoid
Summary: As the clock tics, and time continues to turn, fall into Derrensland where mischief and absurdity copulates into a tale of two men bound to each other amongst every facet of reality. Spirits will lift, fire will ignite, and blood will spill. What is real? What is not? Richie and Eddie, flames of the same kin, find their way back to each other by means of floating dreams. Forever, and always.[Alice in Wonderland AU]





	Till My Watch Tics 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just like this story, my brain bleeds nonsense and a love for Reddie. I hope you enjoy it, I poured what’s remaining of my soul into this. For those that have read the novel, catch the Easter eggs hidden in the text. I wanted to make a brief note explaining the names for Vitadee and Vitamee beforehand to avert confusion: In Latin, vita means “life”. The suffix “-diem” translates to “day”, and “-mortem” to “death”. I wanted to make their names different from Lewis Carroll’s original work, so I hope now there won’t be too much eyebrow-raising over it. Keep in mind as well that “simul” is Latin for “together”. Also shoutout to H.P. Lovecraft towards the end, you’ll see what I mean. Thank you for reading, friends. 
> 
> Also the original Alice in Wonderland novel has 26, 432 words…. Did I really… just write a Reddie fic longer than the original. I think I did. Yowza.
> 
> LINK TO FIC PLAYLIST: [The Loon's Tunes](https://open.spotify.com/user/dasyi9ix4xw4p4qozp9hkhz05/playlist/70CVSKgJXp3IsgPZY8hDQZ)

**_*Tic*_ **

_Ladies and gents_

_Spirits of one light_

_Take to the wind_

_Set your ambitions aflight_

 

_A life for each own_

_Though our senses dwindle_

_Encased in fragile thread_

_Enduring a mortal spindle_

 

_Dance, human dance_

_Across voids of space_

_Find a meaning_

_A trance to place_

 

_Others share your mind_

_We yearn sensation_

_Moon and sun transpose_

_Dualistic vibration_

 

_Sirens trust their song_

_So trust the folly of dreams_

_Wipe all you know_

_For nothing is as it seems_

* * *

**[12 Strikes Noon, Follow The Balloon]**

“Eddie Bear, you ought to be ready by now! Please, I beg of you, come out of your room this moment! We mustn’t be late!” Sonia demanded from outside Eddie’s bedroom. She paced back and forth outside the rod-iron sheathed door, her heels booming at each waddle from the massive amount of weight they supported.

“I’ll be out in a second Ma, give it a rest. I’m almost finished putting on these God-forsaken trousers. Why are these popular anyway? Shorts seem much more sensible for this damned humidity.”

Sonia shouted back, “You need to look perfect today my boy, don’t argue with your mother. Shorts are ridiculous, we don’t want the others to see you as a fruit now. Chop chop, Myra is waiting.” Eddie let out the heaviest sigh to have ever been sighed, and rolled up the shorts to put in the inside pocket of his dark blue, single-breasted vest.

“Bloody hell, perhaps God himself will bless my day with stopping my heart before having to see _my beloved._ Thank you mother, I am OH SO OH SO so eager to see my demon wench!”

His tongue was dripping in sarcasm, forming a flowing stream of petulance. Her bosoms may be taut, and waist properly trained to be inches smaller than other broads, but Eddie couldn’t have cared any less for Myra. She was certainly not his beloved, and never would be. She was a downright monstrosity; Myra the Hydra he called her, behind her back and directly to her permanently pinched face.

“ _Edward_ , enough. I should have used soap to cleanse that mouth more when you were younger.”

“Maybe you should have, maybe it would have made me less of a fruit-topped sponge cake as well!” And he made purposely high pitched giggles to spite his mother.

“This is nonsense, come out this instan-”

Eddie pressed his lips to the crack of the door and firmly stated, “Father would have thought this was wrong. All wrong. And _mother....._ every bone in my body is nonsense, it keeps me sane. You should try it sometime when that girdle isn’t hindering your breath too much.”  

_*          *          *_

_[12 years ago]_

_“Frank, you understand the absurdity of this voyage right? It’s ludicrous, no one will patron it,” Wentworth expressed with concern._

_“Which is why it will be the most successful voyage to ever exist. The unpredictability here is our friend, Went! Don’t you see?” Frank excitedly argued._

_Frank Kaspbrak and Wentworth Hightopp were traders, looking for new and unique places for business. They had quite the reputation for being exceptional at their job for the items they introduced to Britain from far off lands, despite being ridiculed initially for their bold, and arguably risky tactics. Above being business partners, however, they were best friends. And so were their sons._

_Wentworth swayed his head side to side and fixed his gaze on one of the floorboards, thoughtfully. With a chuckle, he lifted his hand to knock on Frank’s temple, “Unfortunately, I don’t see. You’re utterly insane, my friend. Off to the looney bin you’ll go-”_

_From several rooms down the hallway, Eddie could be heard switching between shrieking laughter and shrill screams. Frank and Went shot each other side glances and growing smirks._

_“What trouble could that boy possibly be stirring up now?” Went pondered._

_Eddie yipped, “PAPA, Richie is pinching me! OUCHHHHH, Richie stop it, stop!”_

_Short-gated footsteps were bolting down the hallway and creating light echoes, “We shall find out shortly I assume in 3...2....” Frank’s countdown ended with a giggling child crashing into the study to latch onto Went’s leg._

_Wentworth’s hands kindly unhooked Richie’s grip and he rested on his haunches to meet his son’s magnified, crystal blue eyeballs._

_“Tarrant Richie Hightopp, why are you pinching Little Kasp? Where are your manners, have I taught you nothing?” Went said with raised eyebrows, and an endearing grin._

_“Father, Eddie ith going mad! I had to pinch him, he wath mumbling about a red balloon and, and, and other crazy thtuff in hith thleep! And I don’t want him to be thent away, tha’ can never ever happen, pleathe don’ let tha’ happen,” Richie explained with genuine worry. The gap in his front teeth gave the wild-haired boy a comical lisp, earning a wide smile from any person who ever heard him speak._

_Frank stepped towards Richie and ruffled his dark curls, “Don’t worry Tarrant, Edward just inherited my imagination, he won’t be going anywhere. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be right back.” Frank briskly exited the study to check on his son, leaving Went to console Richie._

_The moment Frank entered the bedroom Eddie asked out of breath and with enlarged eyes, “Papa, am I going mad? Richie says I’m going mad.”_

_Plopping himself next to Eddie on the bed, he placed the back of his hand to Eddie’s forehead, “Oh dear....I think he’s right. You're bonkers, completely off your rocker.”_

_He leaned in to continue, “But let me tell you something. All the best people are.” Eddie beamed up at him with the infinite amount of love he held for his father._

_Pulling out a silver pocket watch to read the time, “Ah, my child it is getting late! The time already reads 12 p.m., it’s well past your bedtime.”_

_“But, it’s just after midnight Papa. Is your watch broken?”_

_“Close! I love you, my observant boy. Look look, my clock goes counterclockwise, and for good reason. Time and reality are relative, and as long as I know the real time, the made up numbers here can read whatever they wish and in whatever rotation.”_

_With a nod, Eddie understood Frank’s logic. He was right, after all, the clock could read 12 p.m. and it would in actuality still be midnight outside, despite the numbers on the clock. It made so much sense to Eddie, that he thought setting all his clocks in his future manor to be counterclockwise would be wise. It would get dark and light at the same time every day no matter what direction the clock arms ticked, and counterclockwise seemed better than the latter._

_“Time to sleep now Edward, and remember that nonsensical dreams do not make you mad. Not pursuing them, do,” And with a kiss to the top of Eddie’s head, Frank left the Victorian bedroom._

*          *          *

Sonia’s mouth dropped open, but words were trapped in the back of her throat. Eddie waltzed over to his writing desk where a silver pocket watch glinted in the morning sunlight. Gently picking it up, he gave it a tender squeeze, and attached it’s chain to a hook in his vest. He put the accessory in the outside pocket, sharing the space with a small, porcelain pill box. He never went anywhere without his father’s pocket watch. He would sooner have left his manor without shoes before the watch.  

Eddie threw open the door, crossed his arms, and stormed passed Sonia. He made sure to drag his feet, to scuff up the expensive dress shoes that he was ordered to sport. He thought they made him look like a pompous high-class snoot, and being considered one of _those_ made his stomach churn. Money and status made good people rot.

“Don’t talk to your mother like that dear, you’re hurting my feelings,” She said whilst forcing tears to her eyes. Those pooled tears were a highly manipulative act that unfortunately, worked wonders, as they used to on his father when he was alive. 

“ _Fine_ , I’ll behave. Let’s go see Myra,” He agreed begrudgingly. 

Their carriage battled with unleveled cobblestone for two hours to Eddie’s dismay, and approached an ivory mansion whose grandeur was unnecessarily exaggerated. They trotted behind other carriages waiting in line to drop off pampered guests for the exclusive event thrown by Myra’s family.

“Now Edward, you be overly kind and gracious to Myra today. It is, after all, a very special day for the two of you.”

Eddie quirked his head, “Pardon?”

“This elaborate party is for the two of you.”

“Mother.....I-I’m not following.”

Sonia shifted uncomfortably and retrieved a small cherrywood box from her jeweled clutch, placing it in Eddie’s hands.

“Honey, you know how much we need this to work,” she pleaded with faux sympathy. Eddie’s confusion washed away, and was replaced with sheer horror.

“She’ll give you beautiful children, her family will provide an unmatchable dowry. Please, think of our future-”

“ _But-_ ”

Sonia was losing her patience, “But nothing. You’re 18 now, and it’s time to secure yourself a promising woman. You need a _woman_. You need her Eddie, just like you’ve needed me-”

“I don’t love her, Ma. I can’t, I.....I _can’t,_ ” and Eddie was becoming frantic, hyperventilating unrhythmically. 

“You must, and you will. I’m sorry Eddie, we need to be realistic about _him,_ ” And she placed her hands over his to physically seal his fate. The carriage finally arrived at the front of the driveway, with a servant promptly opening the door for Eddie and Sonia to step out.

Sonia knew her son loved another. A man.

There was no future with  _him_ in the picture, and she felt it was her own responsibility to ensure a marriage with Myra the Hydra, disregarding how monstrous she really was.  

“Ah, Master Kaspbrak! Lady Myra will be very pleased to see you’re here. I’ll let her know at once,” The servant joyously announced. He straightened out his back and flattened the front of his suit of nonexistent wrinkles to look as primed for Eddie as possible. Still panicked, Eddie had to be aggressively nudged out of the carriage by his mother. Where was God to strike him dead? Did praying for years earn him no mercy?

His mind was swimming. Submerging, then drowning. Thoughts swirled in violent currents, and left him incapacitated to think of anything besides _him_. Maybe if he never learned how to swim, his lungs would have filled with enough noxious notions to drown him physically. But he did know how, and he paddled through this nightmare with flailing strokes.  

As he and his mother walked through towering stained glass doors, one arm looped with his mother’s and the other hand plunged in his pant’s pocket to clench the cherrywood box. The box had a cool, smooth surface naturally, but currently, it singed his fingertips with the daunting promise of what was sitting inside. There was a hole burning in his pocket that only he could feel.

He reached for his handkerchief to wipe away the beads of sweat from his forehead, they were beginning to soak the blonde waves that rested there. Paintings and busts of deceased members of Myra’s family seemed to turn and watch Eddie as he descended through the mansion to the backyard gardens. They were nothing close to friendly eyes. He was glad he would never have to meet them in person, because, well, they were dead!

Eddie dropped Sonia’s arm when he spotted a familiar face who was casually sipping straight whiskey, and just about ran over to meet him.

“Edward! It’s so good to see you, how are yo- My word you are pale, are there ghosts inside giving you trouble?” Wentworth playfully asked.

“Mr. Hightopp, is uh- is Richie here?”

“Why yes, he should be around here somewhere. I understand you have matters to discuss with your friend,” And there was a soft sadness in his tone that silently empathized ‘I’m sorry’.  Went was like a father to Eddie, he easily suspected Eddie’s intentions.

He continued, “I would check the rose garden if I were you, he looked particularly thoughtful today.” Pushing up his spectacles, he placed both hands on Eddie’s shoulders and squinted.

“You know, you grow to look more like Frank every day, Eddie. He would have been so proud of you,” Went said with a smile. 

“Now go find my son, Tarrant will probably get lost in that garden if you don’t rescue him.”

“I will sir, I’m on it. And, I-uh......thank you,” And without warning, he scooped Went into a tight embrace. This was highly improper, resulting in sneers from other guests, but Went accepted the hug and patted Eddie on the back devoid of shame. 

Eddie needed to find Richie, so he dashed towards the gardens. He jogged down aisles of white roses and newly trimmed tall hedges that formed a maze of shrubbery. He rounded certain corners more than once and halted to sit on a marble bench he had passed for the second, or third time to catch his breath.

Out of the corner of his eye, a red blur floated out of the bushes. A single red balloon was traveling down the center of the aisle, easily going against the gusts of wind that blew. Eddie gawked in confusion, and the more intently Eddie stared, the more he swore he heard whispers that spoke his name. He shook his head and wiped his eyes. 

The balloon was gone when he opened his eyes. The stress must finally be taking its toll on him today, perhaps he was actually losing his marbles.

Faint whistles could be heard identically matching the tune of a robin’s song from the tree shading Eddie. He shot up from his seat, and waited for the culprit to appear from any direction. The whistles gained volume, so they must be getting closer and Eddie could hear his heartbeat drumming in his ears. The robin stopped singing, and so did the whistles.

Bony arms wrapped around Eddie’s waist from behind that tightened and lifted his smaller frame up and in a circle. Loose playing cards flew out of Richie’s pockets as he twirled. Eddie howled with laughter and was shortly placed on his feet again after a few rotations.

“Spying on me, are we Eds?” Richie said as he scrambled to pick up the scattered cards before they flew away. He quickly shuffled his deck and counted them, realizing he was missing one, and his favorite one. He liked the green joker card, but he favored its twin. The purple joker card must have been flung into an unseen location.

Eddie threw his arms over Richie’s shoulders and quickly closed the gap between them with a loving kiss. Richie sweetly returned the lipped warmth, and rested his hands in the dip of Eddie’s back. Inadvertently they expressed a mutual neediness that was being physically tended to by grips and gropes, within secrecy.

An impassioned love, masked by a cloak of thorned flowers. 

After their lips separated, Eddie lifted his fingers to trace the brim of Richie’s top hat, “I wasn’t spying on you, I just needed to find you.” Despite wearing the hat, the sun’s rays heated Richie’s pale, freckled complexion. His glasses matched his father’s more now, being horn-rimmed and fitted to his eyes, instead of magnifying them by a power of five.

“Well, I’m glad you did. I was missing you, and by golly do you look ravishing,” Richie mused. Eddie relaxed his head to rest it directly over Richie’s heart. It was a comforting beat that held a different rhythm than the clockwork of his own heart. They held each other, lightly swaying to orchestrated melodies of romanticism’s past emanating from the mansion’s core, as gusts of wind scattered petals throughout the hedges. Ascending heaven’s pearly gates to Chopin nocturnes couldn’t have been more appealing.

A heaviness weighted Eddie’s euphoria down from the clouds, settling in his chest. He took all the needed intakes of oxygen he pleased, before breaking their conjoined silence.

“Richie, I-”

“I know.”

Eddie twitched in confusion, “I don’t understand, what do you kno-”

“I know. I know that you’re asking Myra to marry you today. I know, love.”

Eddie’s grip behind Richie’s neck tightened severely.

“I was told a few nights ago. Myra the Hydra, who’s now our fucking entendre. But there is a benefit to all this,” Richie rationalized as they continued to sway. He was quick with rhymes that made questionable sense, even in the darkest of times.

“...I was required to get the handsome groom a gift,” Richie finished with lightly flicking Eddie’s nose with the tip of his tongue.

Eddie squirmed, “Are you serious? Tarrant Richie Hightopp, are you really going to give me a present on the worst day of my life?”

“ _Edward_ , C’mon, not my actual name. And plus the gift is really for the _enchanting_ Mrs. Hydra, that should have been assumed.”

“Beep beep, Richie,” But Eddie never really wished for him to ever stop talking. 

Richie used one arm to scoop Eddie high off the ground to land gingerly down into both of his outstretched limbs. Nips were placed along Eddie’s neck as Richie paraded down the aisle of roses with his beloved safe in his grasp.

“Now Little Kasp, would you like your gift, or no?” He eagerly asked.

“Only your father is allowed to call me that, Rich.....But yes, I would like my present,” Eddie obliged.

Richie set Eddie on his feet and tossed open the inside of his coat to rummage through a pocket. Another pocket. And, another pocket. He pouted and recalled the preceding morning, excitedly reached into yet another pocket. Richie pulled out a miniature leather-bound book that could have been a diary for a house elf.  The gapped grin on Richie’s face was fatally contagious.

“Open it, open it, _open it,_ ” he encouraged with little hops on the balls of his feet.

Eddie snatched the small journal from Richie’s grip and opened it to page 1 that read in scribbly calligraphy: “Eds & Richie”, with at the bottom scripted “Forever & Always”.

The journal was full of empty pages, but curiously the second and third pages were ripped out. Accidents happen, Eddie reasoned. They mustn't have been too important.

Conglomerates of conflicting emotions flooded Eddie, but the most intense overruled, being love. The Queen’s crown jewels were worth less than this elf book of blank parchment.

Richie submissed down to one knee, and took Eddie’s hands, “I don’t have a ring for you Eddie, but I want to give you everything I have.....I want to give you _my time_. We’ll put the memories we make in this book, ya see. All of ‘em! Even the ones we hate.” His irises shone so brightly, they seemed unrealistically violet over their natural blue.

Rising, he clasped his skeletal hands on either side of Eddie’s face. He peered directly through his being so intently that it was uncharacteristically serious for Richie to do.

“I’m going to spend eternity with you Eddie Kaspbrak, and absolutely nothing can stop me.”

Eddie reached a hand up to contour Richie’s cheekbone, “Nothing’s, not impossible.”

They simultaneously leaned in to marry their lips, a commitment of flesh rather than doctrine, of their plans for forever. A signed piece of paper, or a metal ring around your finger meant jack shit. A promise sealed between charged energy was an unbreakable force. They wrapped their arms around each other, needing as much contact as possible.

“Wha-....what are we going to do?”

“We’ll figure it out Eds, I know we will. Despite our unfavorable odds.”

Eddie contemplated momentarily, “Maybe God will strike her dead instead of me.”

“Oi! Wouldn’t that be a miracle,” And Richie snatched one of Eddie’s hands to kiss its knuckles.

In between lazy smooches that began to creep from his knuckles and up Eddie’s arm, he mumbled, “Just remember, you’ll always be mine, and I am yours. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it will forever stay. To hell with what that ring means.”

Eddie was overwhelmed with a burdening shame and endless affection for his best friend he had fallen in love with. He wanted to run, and keep running until he was unable to recall why he was running.

“It’s okay, you can do it. I know you can. Eds Takes His Meds, can’t lose his heads! You have to Eddie, and it’s okay. _It’s okay,_ ” Richie accepted. He unrolled his spine to regain his tall stature and pulled Eddie into his arms to pet the back of his head with his own chin comfortably rested on top.

“.....Richie?”

“Mmmmmm?”

“I-I love you. So, so much.”

“Oh, how I love you too.”

The glue keeping them attached soon melted, and they traded pressed chests for loosely entwined hands as they searched for their way out of the garden’s maze together. The swallowtail of Richie’s coat flapped like a black veil behind his lengthy steps. After a tight squeeze, they dropped hands as they saw the rose-lined archway of the exit, and rejoined Eddie’s supposed engagement party. Richie scanned for his father, while Eddie was hailed by the bane of his existence.

“Eddie Bear! Edward, there you are, we have been looking all over for you dear,” Sonia shouted from a gazebo in the center of the backyard that was encapsulated by a crowd of guests. Delightfully relieved to see him, she waved him over with gargantuan, flapping arms. She was sure Eddie had fled the party, and with _him_.

Myra reached for Eddie’s cheeks and placed a messy, lipsticked kiss directly on his lips. In an obnoxiously squeaky voice she squealed, “My Eddie shmuck’ms, I’ve been waiting for you! Ooooooooooo I love you, I love you, I love you, today is the bestest day ever, isn’t it?” Her face was pinched, as it always was, and Eddie forced a smile that didn’t look even in the slightest authentic.

Sonia lifted a teacup from a nearby table and hit a butter knife against it consecutively, “ATTENTION, attention ladies and gentlemen! I believe my boy has an announcement to make,” and she shot Eddie a glare with her eyes lingering downward towards the pocket that held the ring.

Eddie woefully turned to the crowd, desperate to see a certain face. All eyes were on him, but the only pair he returned were yearning aquamarines. Richie glumly smiled, and mouthed “ _It’s okay, I’m here._ ”

Eddie’s breath hitched in his throat, only being able to respond with a mourning half-smile. Tears threatened to pour in front of hundreds, but he couldn’t care less.

A sly wink from Richie was the signature on their floating contract, gifting the ounce of strength needed to return from the clouds once more.

With a sigh and audible gulp, Eddie diverged his attention to Myra. Getting on one knee, he reached for the cherrywood box in his pocket.

Before pulling the box entirely out though, an expanding form behind Myra outside of the gazebo caught his eye. Another red blur.

The balloon was suspended in the air, watching him. Once Eddie’s gaze was transfixed, it began to travel away from the gazebo and trace the ground at a frightening speed. At the edge of the forest opposite to the gardens, it stopped and was suspended perfectly in the air once more. It was waiting.

“Eddie? Um, _HELLO_!” Myra shrieked.

Without looking away from the balloon, Eddie pushed the box deeper into his pocket and stood up. Just like he needed to find Richie, Eddie needed to follow this balloon to wherever it was trying to take him.

“Excuse me, everyone. I’m sorry, but...... _I need a moment._ ”

Eddie sprinted down the wooden steps to chase the balloon, which at Eddie’s decision to follow, began to descend further into the forest. He felt that his body was floating.

* * *

**_*TicTicTicTicTicTicTicTicTicTicTicTic*_ **

**[11 To Leave Town, Is Up Down?]**

Eddie heaved his feet forward as quickly as they could run to catch up with the disappearing balloon. Confused gasps and shouts dissipated in the distance the farther he ran. He didn’t think about getting lost in this woodland forest he had never explored. And he didn’t care where he was going. He followed his impulsive instinct to pursue the balloon because just like counterclockwise felt to be a better direction than the default setting, following this balloon was the right decision.

Swallowed by the forest, he was gone.

He disappeared, barreling through branches, thorny brush, ferns, all to keep pace with the speed of the balloon effortlessly weaving through the trees. Bloodied scratches accumulated on his arms and the foliage tore at his pants. Have minutes passed? Have hours? Edward Kaspbrak had no idea. He scurried towards the balloon through an open field and hillside, regardless of the time it took. Where was the sun? Looking up, it could have been anywhere.

The closer he encroached the red blur, the easier it was to make out the whispers infiltrating his head. The balloon was speaking to him, and in a variety of voices.

_Edward_

_We’ve missed you_

_Eddie_

_The lad’s lost it, I’m afraid_

_Eds?_

_I am all that was, is, and ever will be, child_

_My son_

_You’ll float, too_

He hurdled over one last fallen oak tree, and dug his muddied heels into the ground to stop his perseverant propulsion. The balloon was hovering in front of a gaping opening in between a tree’s buttress roots.

This was not an oak, this was not a cedar, this was not a fir. The willow sparkled iridescent blues and greens as you moved your head, with monarchs dusting the canopy and leaving branches occasionally to rest on another comfortable spot. They formed intricate, rotating patterns resembling biological hieroglyphs every few seconds. Eddie had never witnessed anything close to this phenomenon.

Once Eddie noticed the balloon, it delved into the pit.

Eddie collapsed backward on the log he had just hopped over to catch his breath. From his studies, he pondered as to why monarchs would be in Britain this time of year. They ecologically held a calculated course that was immaculately predictable. His cocked head analyzed the perennial and the winged, adorned creatures thoroughly before appealing to physical needs.

“Oh bother, my fuckin’ pants," he muttered as he looked down at his shredded trousers. If this were any other occasion he would have been overjoyed that these abominations for a pair of pants were destroyed. Oh? Oh yes!

Bursting into an epiphany of muffled laughter, Eddie ravaged the inside of his vest pocket to retrieve a pair of rolled up shorts. He must have intuitively known he’d need them, he positively knew it. The best advice his father had ever given him was to listen to his gut, and reaching for his pocket watch, he grasped it and gave it repetitive kisses before placing it back in his pocket. 

He stripped his bottom half and tossed the mangled trousers aside to slip on the pair of brown shorts he had wanted to wear initially. Flattening the front of himself with both palms to get any wrinkles out, he slowly approached the opening of the pit. This was out of habit and respect for clean clothes, but was a complete waste of time.

Getting on his hands and knees to inch himself into the hole he called out, “Hello?”

He crawled a few more inches. Then a few more feet. The inside of the pit was much larger from the inside and indefinitely lit from plumes of colored illumination at the end of the downward sloped tunnel. He crept further down the tunnel, entranced by curious psychedelic streams of color that graced its lining.

The substrate under him began to violently rattle, quake, and left him disoriented with blaring lights blinding him from everywhere inside the tunnel. Burying his fingernails into the ground to maintain stability, they gathered dirt, moss fibers, and fresh droplets of blood.

With the sound of a sharp balloon pop, one of the unknown voices from before made themselves clearly heard this time.

 _“Come to the Queen.”_  

The ground beneath Eddie shattered like glass, and he buckled with it.

He was falling. Plummeting in backward somersaults, he screamed and desperately grabbed for anything to stop the fall. Alas, there was nothing. 

It was a zooming freefall where there was no control to be had. A forceful magnetism yanked Eddie, eager for his arrival.

He pummelled passed a bonging grandfather clock, a library of loose books where several smacked parts of his body, silk ribbons reached out to wrap around his legs through coveys of glitter, and he watched in horror as a flock of sparrows flew both ways, unsure of whether they were shooting out of the hole or deeper into its abyss.

What was down could have been left, and up was as good as right.

A soundboard of chimes, bells, whistles, and tics played around Eddie, along with an uncomplimentary vibratoed calliope tune. Every single sense was overstimulated. Eddie’s ears, skin, eyes, and nose all had alarms wailing with sensory overload.

Eddie finally crashed into a spiraling slide that sent him in nauseating loops of intensely g-forced spins. Around and around he spun before being spit out into the center of a room.

Slowly rising to his feet, he patted his vest pockets to make sure all his belongings were still there. Remarkably, the pocket watch, pill box, and Richie’s book all remained intact.

“This is the most bizarre fucking treehouse I have _ever_ been in.”

The cylindrical room was embellished with ablaze candelabras and a ceiling that could have been fifty feet high, lined with different kinds of doors; old, new, wooden, steel, velvet, curtained. Some of the doors couldn’t have even been reached, however, being stories off the ground.

Eddie walked over to one of the doors nested on the floor and tried to open it. No luck. Trying the next door, it was locked as well. He twisted the doorknobs and latches of all the doors that lined the circumference, but all were bolted shut.  

He huffed and walked over to the only piece of furniture in the room, which was an elegantly blown glass table. The table was empty, except for a labeled glass flask. 

“Drink me?”

The viscous fluid inside resembled puss. It appeared clumpy and having a heterogeneous consistency when Eddie picked it up to swirl it side to side, as well as having an off-putting yellowish coloration. 

“There is absolutely no way I’m drinking this rubbish.” 

Eddie once more tried all the doors to check if any had changed their minds about opening. He even attempted picking one of the locks. Still no success. 

“ _Shit._ ”

Returning to the glass table, he scowled at the flask. To Eddie’s demise, it seemed this flask was the only feasible option to exit this room, and climbing back out of that hole was not an option whatsoever. He jerked the flask’s cork off, letting escape a horrendously foul odor. Plugging his nose and grimacing, he gulped down half of its contents.

It tasted like puss too.

He finally understood how one would be able to reach the doors suspended in the room’s walls leagues above the ground, as his entire body painfully cracked and stretched to grow twenty feet taller within seconds. The flask slipped out of his hand and bounced along the ground until hitting the wall and shattering. Since his clothes morphed with his new size, he wasn’t clear if the room shrank or if he was growing. The physics and logicality of his situation resulted in him disregarding further explanation. He must be dreaming after all, and in the absurdity of dreams,  explanations themselves were the element of nonsense.

“Well, I always did complain about wanting to be taller.....I ought to be more clear next time with how,” he quarreled with himself. 

His right eye caught a glimmering box on the glass table yards below, that hadn’t been there moments earlier. Even from afar, Eddie recognized exactly what it was. He clumsily reached his newly oversized hand down to inspect the item.

It was a pillbox, much like his own.

“ _Eat me_? You’ve got to be kidding.”

His heated fuse was shortening, and he was now peeved at the paradoxical game the universe was pawning him. Without further delay, he popped open the porcelain latch to reveal clusters of white pills. Since he habitually took his pills in pairs, he carefully chose two that were to his liking and dry swallowed them. All the pills were identical, but Eddie liked these two pills best.

Instantly his body seized and shrank back down to a normal size, but to his surprise kept shrinking until he was about the height of a praying mantis. Perhaps, consuming _two_ pills was not the best choice.

A skeleton key appeared on the glass table, sending pulsing vibrations throughout the room.

His cheeks flushed an angry cherry red, coming to the realization that taking one pill would have kept him at the ideal height to attain the key. Now he couldn’t reach the key, or a handle to any of the doors. Stubbornness fueled his ambition, and he surveyed the antiqued room for a solution.

The flask, at the opposite side of the circular room, was in scattered pieces.

Eddie flew to the other side of the room, as fast as an insect-sized man could. He thought he would never be ungrateful for the height he was born with again, for this seemingly small distance took too long to cover as a bug.

Some glass shards were larger than his whole body. He avoided their sharp edges to behold a pool of the hated liquid he had consumed earlier.

“One drop. One drop should be enough,” and using his hands as a shovel he scooped up a pool of the substance. He didn’t have an aidful hand to plug his nose this time.

With one drawn-out breath, he allowed the fluid to slide down his throat.

Worse than adolescent growing pains, his bones fractured to regain his natural height. He ran back over to the table,  plucked off the key and pocketed the box of body shrinking pills, for possible future use. A wave of success washed over Eddie as he rushed over to the first door in reach to try the key.

It didn’t work. Neither did the second, or the third.

He looked at the key, then at all of the doors. The key was no doubt wooden and had a darkened reddish hue. _Cherrywood_.

There was one door that perfectly matched this key.

Eddie located the cherrywood door, and shoved the key into its slot. Flicking his wrist to the right, the latch retracted with a heavy click.

* * *

**_*TicTicTicTicTicTicTicTicTicTicTic*_ **

**[10 May Be Even, But An Odd Pair Has Arisen]**

The door creaked open, taking the key with it.

A lively tropical view made Eddie’s eyes flicker erratically to absorb what he was seeing, or dreaming. Falling down that hole must have teleported him through the Earth’s core to the other side. Or to a nearby galactic dimension of cretaceous embezzled landscape.  

Palms rose to the skyline to cast shadows below, toadstools hummed thieving auras, indistinct creatures danced through the air in between growls, and heaps of misty clouds penetrated crevices of the sky and peaking sunlight alike.

Stepping over the threshold, Eddie gawked at his new surroundings. The door abruptly slammed closed, and he snapped around to see that it had vanished.

Skipping, more like hopping, footsteps made their way through the brush for an anticipatory reintroduction. The man busted through the last few fronds, placing himself inches in front of Eddie.

The dark-skinned man was impeccably dressed, with a waistcoat that Eddie immediately wished he had one of similar taste. He also had a pair of sprouting rabbit ears.

“Eddie! It’s about time, we’ve been waiting for you! No time to waste my friend, we must hurry if everything is to go to plan,” As he tapped the outside of a pocket watch and took a hold of Eddie’s forearm.

“I sent the balloon for you, hopefully, the darn thing didn’t give you too much troubl-” 

Eddie retracted his arm, “Excuse me, do I know you?”

“Woah woah, let me get this straight. You don’t remember me?”

“We’ve never met, how can I _remember_ you?”

“Oh dear, I do see it has been quite a while,” The rabbit-man hybrid reasoned.

“A _while_? If I could get some explanation here I would be very happ-” 

“Bill will explain, I promise! We must move now though, there’s no time, no time! It’s already half past second tea!” And he rapidly made his way back into the brush.

Eddie reluctantly followed and tried to keep up with the friendly messenger as best he could by switching between speed-walking and little runs.

“My name is Mike by the way, so try to remember this time yes? Yes. Okay good, I almost took offense,” He yelled over his shoulder as he pushed his way around protruding obstacles.

“Hurry Eddie, hurry. That extra pill you took has us late, time is running short!”

Mike must not have been aware of his escalating speed, because after a few minutes, Mike’s comments and encouragements to keep up became dimmer and dimmer until nothing could be heard at all. Eddie was walking alone, where he popped out of the suffocating forest to a canopied path. Mike was nowhere in sight, but his bare footsteps made clear impressions in the soft surface of the ground that indicated where he was headed to.

Eddie continued to power walk in the direction of Mike’s footsteps, even trying to jump in the prints as he made his way. Mike really did have a long gait, and Eddie appeared like a small child struggling to play a colossal game of hopscotch, just barely reaching his targets. 

As Eddie fumbled to chase Mike’s footsteps, a pair of nearly identical, whiny voices synchronized from behind a palm.

“Where are you off to, tiny boy?”

Caught off guard, he diverted his attention from placing calculated steps to the palm and tripped, sending him to the ground. Out stepped two heavyset, mousy-haired women in black and white vertically striped gowns reaching their ankles, that spoke patronizingly one after the other in breathless beats.

“You know you could get hurt, you look fragile.”

“And dim! Very dim!”

“Fragile and dim, yes you are.”

“ _Tragic_!”

“Do you know what happens to _your_ kind out here?”

“ _Your_ _kind_ , most unwelcome.”

“It’s unsafe.”

“Nothing is safe!”

“Safe? Bullocks!”

“No, _yes_ , nothing is safe.”

“Especially for _you._ ”

“ _Sick boy._ ”

“ _Sick Eds, is sick._ ”

Eddie coldly shifted his eyes to look at each woman as she spoke in turn.

“I’m Vitamee.”

“And I’m Vitadee.”

“Let us help you, little boy,” They said together.

Eddie was red in the face and he lifted himself to his feet, “I am not _little_ , you droning harpies. I will find my way on my own, thank you very muc-”

“Oh, but you won’t! How will you survive by yourself out here?”

“Fragile and dim!”

“Yes, fragile and dim.”

“ _Delicate_ , you are.”

Vitamee and Vitadee looked to each other and released cringeful sniggers, lifting their hands to their mouths to purposefully and unsuccessfully muffle their condescension. They sickeningly reminded Eddie of Myra and his mother.

“I'm leaving, I have more important places to attend that I don’t have to be,” Eddie recited and spat at the ground in front of the women.

As Eddie began to walk down the path again, they chimed in from behind whilst playing patty-cake.

“You will die in time’s soon, child!”

“Listen to us, you must!”

“Dumb child.”

“You will be betrayed, friends to trust you have not!”

“ _Fiends_ , not friends.”

“You should listen!”

“Fiends, no good. Untrustable bitches.”

“ _Listen._ ”

“The Queen won’t listen, Eddie.”

“We care for you, we want what is best!”

“We know best!”

“Ungrateful _twink_!”

“The Hatter will lead you to a most unpleasant end, _twink_!”

“Most unpleasant end.”

* * *

**_*TicTicTicTicTicTicTicTicTicTic*_ **

**[9 Makes A Rhyme, It Is Your Time]**

Their vengeful laughter became an outlier, as Eddie angrily refocused to find Mike’s footprints once more. They were still visible, but each one appeared less defined as he progressed. His name was Mike, right? Right.

Eddie walked for what seemed to be miles. Signs had been bolted to some trees every so often with pictures of crooked arrows, but they in no way aided in telling a clear direction. The few that had a word written on them had no clear message either. A sign reading “Deadlights DEADLIGHTS” with an arrow directing northwest was of no use to Eddie and just seemed to encourage another misleading ploy plotted by the universe. Anything meeting cognitive rationality would have been greatly appreciated by Eddie as he walked, and walked, possibly for no reason at all.

He wondered at what point Mike had realized that he was no longer behind him and if he was retracing his steps to find him. Or, if Mike had lost interest in retrieving him and decided to go home to wherever a rabbit man goes home; it could be a hole in the ground, it could be a house, maybe a house in a hole. It was most unlikely he would live in a hole in a house, though. That would be most uncomfortable, and not suitable for a home unless you were a termite.

Step after step, Eddie made sure to locate the next print and tromp toward it. He didn’t want to miss one, or be veered from the path by any distractions. After ritualistically placing his own foot on each one, he noticed that other foot impressions were now in close proximity as well. Some were pressed to the side of Mike’s, or shortly behind, and others made their mark directly on top. They were of the same size as his own foot.

The path was a loop trail and lead to absolutely nowhere. Eddie growled in frustration and clenched his fists with an anger that made his body tremor.

Mike popped out only his head from between two bromeliads, “Finally, there you are. That loop took you long enough, we have to go!”

“Fuck you, I was on that trail forever because of you,” Eddie pouted.

“It’s not my fault you’re slow,” Mike said with a smirk and retreated back into the forest.

Taking a stabilizing breath, Eddie pushed aside the bromeliads to keep up with Mike. Luckily this time Mike kept a reasonable pace for Eddie to only be a yard behind him. 

They made their way through the greenery in relative silence, as Eddie focused on keeping his breath steady. In times of physical activity, or anxiousness, his lungs capsized from faltered functionality. Sweet scents of hibiscus and strikingly sour lemon zest putrefied the air, intrusively infiltrating every orifice. It was intoxicating. Mike was unphased however, and rambled without struggle for break.

“How are you holding up, Ed?”

“I’m fine, Mike where are we going? I’m going to need a break soon.”

“Okay but you get 30 tics and that is that, we’re on a schedule,” And Mike paused the conversation, and his steps, with a ceasefire.

Eddie crashed into Mike’s back with his sudden halt, “ _Fuck_! Good Lord Mike, give me some warning next time won’t yo-”

“25 tics.”

“ _What_?”

“21 tics,” Mike sensibly stated.

Eddie was not keen on wasting any more time, although he was still ruminating in confusion for Mike’s verbiage. He thoroughly understood mathematics though, and these numbers were being subtracted at a quickening rate.

“Okay, _okay_. Hold your horses,” Eddie said as he retrieved a pillbox from his vest pocket. Throwing two white pills to the back of his throat instinctively, he swallowed and continued to berate Mike. As much as Eddie took kindly to the man, he had brought nothing but trouble and unnecessary rushing.

“14 tics.”

“If you could stop being obnoxious for a whole minute I would be-” but his vocal chords squeaked as they began to shrink. Actually, all of him was beginning to shrink.

Eddie absentmindedly took pills from the other cached pill box, minimizing his stature instead of easing his asthmatic symptoms. He was the size of a lady beetle this time, much smaller than a praying mantis as his first experience with the pills.

“Well, it looks like we’ll be making much better time now that I can put you in my pocket.”

A shrill yell from below Eddie shouted, “DAMN IT!”

Mike bent his body over to let Eddie climb onto his forefinger, gently placing him in a pocket of his waistcoat.

“Hold on tight, let’s go see Big Bill.”

Eddie clasped his hands to the outside of Mike’s pocket, as they returned to a speed that was twice of that the first time Eddie tried to keep up with Mike. He had to shield his face from the generated wind and kept a white-knuckled grasp on his cotton fibers from being suctioned out of the temporary safehold.

Mike galloped with bare feet to his preconceived location of Bill. Without having to expend energy on moving his legs, Eddie’s mind raced with ideas of whom this _Bill_ might be. If a man here could have rabbit ears and hastily run at an inhuman time, then there were no restrictions for what could lie ahead.

Stopping at the intersection of two palms crossing each other, Mike placed a hand over where the two trunks met. The trees straightened from their slump and heaved backwards to reveal an archway of books that were stacked in a perfect complexity to defy known gravity. Eddie recognized some of the books by their binding’s title, like _A Tale of Two Cities_ and Dante’s _Inferno_ , but others were unfamiliar. Mike was familiar with this ritual, for he would not have known to place a hand there if otherwise, or, he had an incredible sense of intuition. Most rabbits did, but most men did not, so where Mike’s intuitiveness fell was unpredictable.

“M-Mike, I see you but w-wuh-where’s Eddie? B-b-bummer if he’s already dead, we’re d-duh-doomed if that’s the case,” Bill softly spoke atop a small mushroom.

“No no, relax. He’s with me, just....your size.”

“ _M-MMM-M-My size_? H-H-ow on earth d-uh’d that hap-p-pen.” 

“He took two pills, and for the second time. You’d think he would learn, but what can I do! That’s why we’re late, right Eddie?” As he tilted his head to his pocket.

Eddie peered out of Mike’s pocket to respond with a leading up cough into his fist, “Um, yeah. Sorry there weren’t directions on these micronizing magic pills, please _excuse_ me.”

“G-Guh-G-ood to see you again Ed, we-we were starting to m-moh-ourn your spitfire.”

Bill lifted his second, left arm to grasp the nozzle of the hookah sitting partnered to him on his mushroom. He fiddled with a dull pencil behind his ear, taking a deep inhale of the spices concocted in the burning pipe. Normally exhaled smoke was white, but these clouds were an ombréd gradient of colorful wisps. Blue to purple escaped Bill’s lips, with the next puff forming an “O” in neon green. Even though he knew he had obvious breathing restrictions, Eddie wanted to try the surrealistic pipe. If white smoke was a product of tobacco, then colored smoke must taste much more pleasant, sweeter even.

Mike strutted over to Bill and encouraged Eddie on to his hand to be placed on the distinctive fungi. Eddie’s hands hooked onto Mike’s fingerprint grooves, and he pulled himself out of the pocket to crouch in his cradling hand as he was transferred to the mushroom, next to Bill.

In insect height, Bill was a towering 3 inches with Eddie only being 1 inch. One of his arms kept the hookah nozzle placed in his mouth, one reached for the pencil behind his ear to note unknown scriptures in a notebook held by another arm, and another scratched a spot at the back of his head. The remaining three arms he had clasped each other in his lap, as his antennae monitored the atmosphere for incoming signals.

Bill directly spoke to Eddie once he was next to him, “E-Eddie, do you remember m-m-ee?”

“To be honest, not at all,” But subconsciously, Eddie recognized the authoritative stuttering.

“One of my oh-oldest-t friends, p-proving my inclination cor-ruh-rect! It hurts, but I’ll h-h-eal.”

“How am I your _friend_ if I just met you-”

“But i-it isn’t the f-f-fir-fuh-first time we’ve m-muh-et. You used to c-ome here quite often, and when thuh-th-things were better too.”

“How could I not remember a man with rabbit ears and another with a stutter and six arms-”

“D-D-D-Di-D-istance and aging, Eddie. It ruins u-uh-us. We’ve been t-trying to reach you for years, b-buh-b-but it seems you’ve h-ha-ad b-better things to do. Valid, b-but now the time we h-have is limited.”

Eddie arched his eyebrows, “Cut the bullshit, what is this time restraint and how the _fuck_ do I get home?”

One of Bill’s arms extended to show Eddie a chronological map littering two of his notebook pages, encrypted with nondescript drawings and bulleted notes. The only item on the pages Eddie’s eyes glued to was a moving doodle of a serpentine mutant with wings blowing green fire along the margins.

“Deadlight’s D-Day is in two duh-d-days. Before you g-guh-go home, w-w-w-w-w-we need to ask a-uh favor of you. The largest favor you’ve p-prah-p-probably ever been asked.”

“Need me to take more body morphing poison? Because I’m way ahead of-”

Mike cut in, “Eddie this is serious, shut your trap and listen to Bill.”

Eddie most certainly did not shut his damn mouth, and he ordered the guarding knights in his mouth to lower the gates for seige. Bill lifted one of his right arms to smack his forehead and push his fingers through side-swept blue hair, for he knew that Mike wanted to help the situation, but instead he ignited a match to fuel Eddie’s wick.

“You make me fall through a fucking horror hole, walk in circles, I certainly don’t know you twats even though you’re calling me _friends_ , and you expect me to do you a _favor_?”

“E-Eddie please, all of Derrensland-d-d and your world depends o-on this. Please..... _reconsider,_ ” Bill scowled at Eddie.

Bill lifted his vice and puffed a few more times, troubled.

“ _Explain then,_ ” Eddie flatly said.

Bill pointed to the mutant in the margins, “A-uh-ccording to the t-timeline, you a-ah-nd another need to d-duh-d-d-efeat the Queen of Hearts and her cha-cha-ch-ampion. And i-it n-uh-needs to be you.”

“Defeat her in what? _Chess_?”

Mike and Bill shared an uncomfortable laugh, but Bill reluctantly answered “No, i-it-it has to be wuh-w-with the simul sword. It’s w-wuh-ith the White King, who’s been k-kuh-eeping it safe for you.”

“I’m not an iron-fisted gladiatored brute, how do you expect me to do that _Big Bill_?”

Bill had known Eddie almost the entirety of his life, he had looked after him, so he formulated a rightfully manipulative plan in his head to win Eddie’s decision. Eddie was aggressively stubborn when faced with challenges, and Bill attempted to use this to his advantage.

Bill took a drawn out drag of the hookah, choked back a cough, and blew a series of black letters in Eddie’s face, with the middle letter being red: L-O-S-E-R. 

Rage pulsed through Eddie.

“I am NOT a loser, _worm._ ”

“G-uh-Good, so you’ll be our ch-ch-ch-champion?”

“I- That’s not what I agreed to.”

“Only a _loser_ would let worlds collapse at his own cowardice,” Bill finished without a stutter. It pained him to anger Eddie so, but it remained the last option.

Eddie corkscrewed his face with indecision, but eventually caved to Bill’s trap, “Fine, here’s your champion Bill. Where’s this demon queen? I need to get home, I have problems of my own to get to, ya know.”

“Y-You need to find the Hatter, then y-you-uh-you’ll be able to find the White King’s castle f-uh-or the simul sword.”

“B-B-But first, let’s make you the s-i-i-ize you were. You’re awf-uh-ully tiny, even more than you-ou were before,” And Bill viciously yanked off a part of the mushroom to give to Eddie.

Eddie took the offering, and held it hesitantly. 

“The _Hatter_?” 

Before Eddie could ask further questions a frenzied, claymore wielding knave straddling a monstrous hound burst through the arch of books they had entered through. Stringy, platinum hair dangled over his rusted armor.

“They were right, the queer ‘ees back! Eddie boy, the Queen requests yer presence.”

* * *

**_*TicTicTicTicTicTicTicTicTic*_ **

**[8 You’re Running Late, Don’t Make Us Bait]**

Bill grabbed all six nozzles of the hookah to inhale what must have been the most painful hit of his life. He exhaled a series of yellow jaguars that clawed the ground in a merciless attack at the knave. The jungle cats tore at the hound, and snapped their jaws at its rider.

“ _GO_!” Bill ordered Mike.

Reaching for his collar, Mike pulled out a small glowing orb and hurled it under the belly of the hound. There was an explosive detonation, sending the hound and knave briefly into the air.

Mike scooped up Eddie and threw him in his waistcoat pocket as he ran out of the clearing, and back into the forest. Instead of holding onto the top of the pocket, Eddie allowed himself to fall to the bottom and sit helplessly as he listened to Mike’s quickened breaths. He sat atop Mike’s pocket watch that ticked in irregular patterns, matching the arrhythmia of one’s heartbeat. Battling snarls and barks could be heard at their departure, with a furious knave cursing to the sky.

Eddie may have thought that his messenger was stealthy before, but he truly did not understand Mike’s terrifying agility potential until a dangerous element was incorporated. They must have been traveling at 50 miles per hour, in between dodging fallen logs, sideways lianas, and scaling steep slopes. Eddie felt them going vertically upwards at one point.

The turbines in Mike’s legs slowly lowered their throttle, eventually coming to a walking pace. Eddie climbed to the top of the pocket, while being thumped relentlessly by Mike’s aggressive heartbeat, to investigate. They were on another path, but unlike the loop trail, this one produced rings of light underneath your feet each time someone stepped.

“He’s a hoot, isn’t he?” Mike sarcastically said while attempting to regain a steady breath.

“Oh yeah, grand hit of the party.”

“That’s Henry, the Knave of Hearts. He’s the right hand to the Queen and dumber than doornails. Not my favorite fellow, not even close.”

“How did he know I was here? I haven’t even been here for that lo-” But Eddie knew the answer as he finished his sentence.

“Those bantering _bitches,_ ” He said to himself.

Vitamee and Vitadee were bad apples from the same rotten tree and allied scouts for the Queen. Not out of loyalty or trusted devotion, but out of fear.

Questions spilled from Eddie’s mouth, “So, who’s the Hatter?”

“The Mad Hatter is only the most colossal loon to grace Derrensland,” Mike snorted.

“We’re searching for a _madman_? Mike, how is this going to help us?”

“His entire being may have been boiled from a stew of foul-mouthed riddles and rhymes and jokes that don’t have a plotline, but he’s brilliant and you’re going to need him. And he makes a great cup of tea.”

“Oh great, a complete fool is going to be my liaison.” 

Mike continued, “The White King also only trusts the Hatter, I couldn’t tell you why, but he won’t let anybody else into his castle except for him. He’s quite the recluse, you see. Prefers to be alone.”

Eddie let this new information settle before asking his next questions. It was also the first time thinking about the creature spitting green fire, and the possibility of having to face that abomination. Chills ran down his spine, and he decided to save questions regarding that aspect, as well as about the Queen, for another time. Or never.

“Where do we find this mad hat man?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“You. Don’t. _Know._ ”

“Not a clue.” 

“This is not adding up, not one fucking bit.”

Mike formed a smirk, “I may not know where to find him, but I do know a certain _someone_ who does.”

They continued along the path for a good while, with Mike craning his neck back and forth in search for something exclusive. Every so often he would approach birch trees that lined the path to inspect them, and keep moving. He only analyzed white birch trees, would lookup, whistle the same series of chords, and when there was no response, sought out another.

Whistling up to the latest birch, an echoed whistle was returned.

He whispered under his breath, “ _Finally._ ”

Mike carefully picked Eddie out of his pocket to rest in the center of his palm, “Eddie do you still have that mushroom piece Bill gave you? I need you to eat it.”

At first, he was skeptical looking at the unappetizing portion of mushroom, but ingested it anyway. His bones rattled underneath his skin, and he painfully stretched to his born height again with his muscles burning as a side effect.

“That’s the last damn time I’m doing that, I swear to God.”

“Last time should have been the last time,” Mike teased.

Wings fluttered in the tree leaves above, and three nightingales flew down to perch on the lowest branch in an orderly line. Each nightingale stared at Mike, presumably from being the source of the initial call.

“I need to talk to Stan, get him for me?” Mike asked the birds.

Every bird shook their head through playful coos.

“Enough with the guff, I need to talk to him. Look who I have with me.”

The birds directed their attention at Eddie, and squawked with bugged eyes. They retreated into the canopy, chattered amongst themselves in bird peeps until they fell silent. Eddie never thought he’d see a bird look embarrassed, but these unmistakably did.

On the branch opposite to the one the birds sat, a figure began to apparate from the air itself. First, elongating swirls spiraled upward to outline the shape of a person’s body, with their back resting against the tree, and one leg hanging off the side. Next, a straightened smile appeared where their head should have been. A beige and white striped tail wrapped around the upper trunk of the tree, with the rest of the stranger’s body filling with color and dimension. The man wore a complimenting collared, white buttoned shirt and tan slacks. The nightingales flew back down to the other branch and looked at their master.

“Michael, how may I help you and our friend out,” Stan said with a half-grin. Feline ears sprouted from his head, amongst delicately combed brown curls.

Mike grew a face-splitting smile, “Stan, my my what an appearance that was, bravo.”

“What can I say,” And Stan shrugged his shoulders with supinated palms.

“We need your help, can you lead us to the Hatter?”

“Me? Know where the Hatter is? You must be the mad one.”

Mike suspiciously frowned, “I see where your birds get their attitudes. C’mon, I know you have tea with him.”

“ _Blasphemy_ , I don’t know what you’re talking about,” But there was an obvious lie in his demeanor.

Turning to Eddie, Mike whispered, “ _They’re friends, trust me on this._ ”

“Eddie, you’re looking older! Same height though,” Stan said with a snigger. Eddie bit the inside of his cheeks as he clenched down, and decided to bite his tongue to be the bigger person. Not before sticking it out at Stan first though.

“Stan you know this is a dire situation, and the Knave could be on our heels. Where is he?”

“He’s close, maybe. Actually, he’s right in front of you,” And Stan’s pupils calmly moved to a massive hydrangea bush below that separated in the middle. The nightingales chirped in excitement and flew over to Stan, settling on both shoulders and one on the top of his dangling foot.

“Thank you Stanley, will you be joining us? It’s going to be a party after all. Every time is.”

Stan motioned to his lower half as the fibers of his body unraveled from the bottom, “I might see you there. _He_ may not be all there, but then again, neither am I.” He completely disappeared and his birds descended in a line to dash through the opening in the hydrangeas.

Eddie initiated pushing through the narrow opening in the bush, following Stan’s nightingales. Him and Mike maneuvered through blue and pink hydrangea corollas, encroaching a space where roaring waves of water noisily consumed the air space, and chimes of bursting tea kettles. 

Coming into the clearing, a long table making a bridge extending over a rushing stream was the first item to be seen. Different sets of porcelain china littered the countertop, with some broken, others fully intact. Some were flipped upside down, some were stacked to a worrying height. Some made noises and spun erratically, others deathly silent and hid behind silverware.

A lone woman with fiery red locks, and rabbit ears like Mike, sat in a chair at the table on the other side of the table flinging steak knives at a tree, each one hitting the same target and cackling once it hit the mark.

“Again, AGAIN!” She sang with the second ‘again’ being in an operatic pitch. The non-knife-throwing-hand lifted a teacup to her lips to sip, but it was missing a bottom so no tea was consumed. She did not seem to mind, or notice, and was having a sublime afternoon.

Eddie approached the table wearily and looked at Mike for hopeful reassurance. This woman was throwing dull knives with frightening expertise, any person with common sense would have been slightly nervous.

In a lowered tone, Eddie asked Mike “Is _that_ the Hatter?”

“Nope, that’s the January Hare. He should be around these grounds somewhere, follow my lead.”

Mike hopped up on to the table and walked across it to take the seat next to the woman. He also took one of the cups and began to sip out of it, even though there was no liquid in it.

“Bev! What’s the occasion for celebration today, love?”

Without breaking concentration from her knife throwing, she responded, “Our boy is back, you remember Eddie? We’re waiting for him! We have a party ready.” There was another knife thrown to split the other already in the tree.

Eddie, to Mike’s surprise, made the bold decision to take the seat in front of Bev that was in line of where she had been chucking the weapons.

“Uhhhh, hello. Good to see you again?” 

Bev dropped her arsenal and crawled across the table to jump in Eddie’s lap and give him a choking hug and kisses to both sides of his face, “We’ve missed you so much Eddie! So so much! You even smell the same!”

Eddie shot Mike blown out eyeballs, that pleaded ‘help’. Bev’s corduroy overalls jingled as she gave Eddie an overwhelming amount of affection.

“Is the Hatter around?” Mike asked.

She removed herself from Eddie’s lap and reverted to her initial spot in little trots, backflipping perfectly into the chair.

“How am I s’posed to know? That’s not my job Mikey,” she giggled and took another cup from the table to sip from. Still no tea in it.

An overhanging willow that shaded the entire table clattered, sending catkins to shower Bev and her guests. The bells attached to strings of the dangling tree branches rang harmoniously as the catkins fell. A rope ladder with wooden step boards cascaded from the top of the willow, settling in the center of the table and illuminated paper lanterns lowered from every treetop in sight. The January Hare clapped her hands in applause, with a mockingly straight face.

A tremendously towering man in a top hat rode the ladder down in a fireman style pole drop. Playing cards flew out of his coat pockets, decorating the table with the fallen leaves and dishevelment of dishes. He dominantly landed with his hands on his hips and his back facing Eddie, Mike, and Bev, making the table shake.

“Fuck that ladder, who needs it, I’m the Hatter!” he proclaimed while using his fingers as guns to shoot nonexistent rounds into the trees. He provided the sound effects for the gunfire, sounding identical to what firing pistols would actually sound like.

Jumping to cross his legs, he pivoted to look at who had arrived at his very much prepared party. His gaze locked on to Eddie.

The almost seven-foot man skipped over to Eddie, clicked his feet in the air, and dropped his lanky body to sit with his legs crisscrossed in front of him. He leaned forward with furrowed eyebrows to look into Eddie’s wild eyes. A gapped toothy grin spread across his face, and the irises behind a small pair of round spectacles melted from a bright green to soft lavender.

“Why hello there, Eds.”

* * *

**_*TicTicTicTicTicTicTicTic*_ **

**[7 Is Lucky As Ever, Don’t Be Clever]**

Eddie rapidly blinked and absorbed an incredibly close up view of the Hatter, who was inches from his face. He reeked of peppermint.

Being a palette of unorganized color, fabrics, and loose items that made clinks and clanks, the Mad Hatter was a clusterfuck of eccentricity that fed empathically on raw emotion. Purple freckles twinkled along the pale bridge of his nose, matching the deep purple curls twisting to the top of his shoulders. An alluring cryptid the Hatter was, if Eddie ever did see one, who reminded him very much of another.

The Hatter twirled his index finger and booped Eddie on the tip of his nose, “You’re late to your own party! Allow me to get the guest of honor some tea, how rude of me.”

As he stood from his place, he elegantly uncurled his arm for Eddie to take his outreached hand. Painted fingernails through fingerless gloves waggled in a wave of anticipation. Eddie took it and was jerked atop the table, suspended mid-air for a moment from eager force, as the Hatter cavorted to the other side. The layers of dust and grime on the cups had been mysteriously wiped away, and each was filled with a generous amount of what was presumably tea.

Pinching the handle of a whistling tea kettle, the Hatter unlatched its lid and dumped some of its contents into his mouth, “No not this one, not exactly the kind you like. Needs to have more tang, for this tangy boy.”

“And how do you know what kind I like, what if I liked sweet?”

“But you don’t like sweet, do you Eds,” The Hatter replied with a knowing simper.

“I’m not fond of that nickname, don’t call me that.”

“Hard to believe because I know you do, you’re not a very good liar. The red in your face says otherwise,” With the kettle still in hand, he used his other to pinch Eddie’s cheek.  

Eddie resisted the pinch but unwillingly smiled at the Hatter’s knowledge. He did in fact like to be called Eds, but it was a childish nickname from his youth, and he always strove to appear as adult as possible to make up for what he insecurely lacked in height and body hair. After current events, he was much more grateful for his height though, and hearing the nickname verbalized did not sting as much. He may have even liked it a little more now.

The Hatter pulled out a vile from the inside of his patched swallow-tailed coat to pop open its cork and skeptically waft the fragrance of the liquid towards his face. The chemical fog that came out of the vile fogged his little glasses, sitting on the end of his nose. Satisfied, he dumped it into the kettle and swirled.

“This should be more to your liking, _just as if mother dearest made it herself,_ ” Saying the last part in a young girl’s stern voice.

“My mother couldn’t salt a cracker properly, let alone make me the kind of tea I like.”

“Is that so? Because what if I said she was here yesterday _begging_ for my company, and I taught her how to make your favorite tea, as well as _other skills,_ ” He said suggestively.

“She’s my absolute favorite, a delight, a saint,” And the Hatter collapsed to his knees, clapping his hands with the teapot causing dings to hurt your eardrums from the clash his rings with the kettle. He was still taller than Eddie on his knees, without including the additional height of the top hat. At this level, Eddie was able to notice a card tucked into the pink ribbon around the Hatter’s hat reading “1/7”; an unusual fraction to sport.

“ _Gross_ , quit it she was never here, and is not a saint. Unless Lucifer still has his wings, then she’s a saint,” Eddie chuckled. 

The Hatter jumped to his feet and lifted the only empty tea cup in sight to pour a fresh cup of the newly mixed tea for Eddie.

“You may be a bad liar, but I’m not, I live a virtuous life of non-mother-lies! You should learn a thing or three from me,” he said with a double-wink; yes, a blink. Some occasions called for a “better” wink, as the Hatter would say so himself.

Stan’s nightingales circled the Hatter to then rest on his shoulders, and one on top of his hat.

He lifted the piping hot cup of tea to Eddie’s face so that the steam rose into his nostrils, “Try it, and if you don’t like it, I will set myself on fire. No lying allowed, and believe me, I’ll know.”

A string of tiny flaming sparks outlined his eyelashes as he flirtatiously blinked. Yes, blinked, not double-winked this time.

“You’re bluffing.”

Reaching into a pocket in the other side of his coat, he retrieved a wizardly long pipe and a match. He lit the inside of the pipe, puffed a few times, and threw the lit match into his pants as he continued to smoke.

“Better try it, I don’t bluff.”

“Good lord, okay _okay_!” And Eddie burned the inside of his mouth filling it with the piping hot tea. As Eddie delayed to consume the tea, the Hatter offered the birds on him tea as well, but they politely declined in chirps.

Painful to swallow, but it was delicious. Actually, it was the best damn cup of steeped herbs he’d ever had. The flavors appeased every taste bud, being the perfect balance of unsweetened earl-grey accented with jasmine.

Eddie curved his back, shouting at Mike, “You were right!”

“Oi! And what was he so right about?” The Hatter spoke as his pants began to smoke.

Eddie calmly turned back to the Hatter, “You’re insane."

“Excellent, now finish your sentence.”

“.....and you make wonderful tea.” 

Stan appeared in the seat next to Mike at the other end of the table with a leg folded over the other, bringing a judging, yet entertaining, edge to the party. He whistled the same song Mike had to call the birds, and the nightingales flew from the Hatter to line the back of his chair. Stan’s tail traced the back of his chair and softly pet the bird to his left as he watched.

“I heard he was lighting himself on fire, what a treat,” He said through poorly hidden joy. His cat ears were at full attention, to hear every detail of the chaos he’d hope would ensue.

“Once again, immaculate timing Stanley,” Mike quipped.

The Hatter stomped his feet to put out the flames close to igniting in his pants, and threw the kettle to shatter on a rock in the middle of the stream, its shards bouldering down the current. Bev threw a series of dishes at the same rock after the Hatter, shattering them as well. The Hatter gave her a delighted nod.

“Mist’ah Eds tellin’ tha truth! I knew your brew was a bold and bland, you just had to try it to understand,” And he patted himself on the shoulder.   

“I am not _bland._ ”

“Bah! Why would your cup of tea say anything about you? That’s preposterous little Kasp, you have much more to offer than bland tea. I don’t prepare parties for bland tea, you see.”

Eddie bashfully blushed and took more sips from the prophetted tea after he blew on it a few times.

With a double clap on his thighs and then his hands, a cherrywood organ fell from the overcasting willow to the forest floor, promptly playing opuses from Saint-Saëns’ _Carnival of the Animals_ on its own accord. 

Bev and Mike hopped up from their seats at once and began to twirl around the mossed riverbed together. They trampled clovers and destroyed patches of lupines without care. Stan lightly swayed his body back and forth in his chair to the tune, with the nightingales mirroring his movements. His tail rose from behind, following the same sway.

The Hatter smacked the teacup out of Eddie’s hand before it had been finished, “Well it looks like you’re done with your tea, care for a dance?”

“I wasn’t done with that, hat man.”

“I had to leave you wanting more,” The Hatter beamed. He raised his eyebrows and silently asked Eddie the same question again.

Eddie hesitantly looked around, for he had never danced with another man in public. The most amount of affection he’d publicly shown another male was just a while ago when he hugged an older gentleman sipping whiskey in a backyard, but he couldn’t recall whom. Although this occurrence may not have been explicitly public, the paranoia in the beaker of his brain screamed an anxious guilt. The guilt his mother implanted in him since he was a child, and the guilt her predecessor vitalized.  

“It’s okay, they’re not here,” The Hatter told Eddie from reading his expression, with his irises clouding to a navy blue, and it was the first obviously genuine statement he had made since their meeting that was free from sarcasm or rhyme. While the Hatter may have maintained an untouched jocular persona, an array of strongly ingrained emotions escaped through two portals of changing color that reflected what his spirit was feeling. A natural green, to violet, to deep blue. Eddie hoped he would never see red. 

Nodding his head in agreeance, Eddie lifted the left side of his mouth into a shy grin. As mad as the Hatter made himself to be, Mike was correct on many points besides him just being able to prepare an exceptional cup of tea. There was a brilliant, cosmic understanding of a being’s nature in his eyes that Eddie trusted, behind the comical lunacy. A unique trait even among humans.

“After you,” Eddie motioned.

The Hatter giddily seized Eddie’s arms, placing them around his waist. There was no way, even in Derrensland’s twisted physical laws, that Eddie’s arms would have been able to reach the Hatter’s shoulders. Eddie could have lengthened his height with a bite of mushroom or obscure pussey liquid, but the only thing he had were body shrinking pills that wouldn’t help. Not one bit. 

They waltzed across the table together, disregarding any plates, cups, or folded napkins. The stream picked up speed, creating a new song of original classical composition with a background of river flow. Singing geysers of water lifted, taking the shape of fluidic nymphs that danced over the section of the table bridging the river. Lanterns fluctuated light, breakable articles shattered, and linens dirtied under their hind limbs as they floated to the rhythm of the phantom organ. The Hatter’s glasses flew off his nose after a particularly swift twirl, landing on the aqueous face of one of the dancing water nymphs, and she giggled as she sustained to entertain with them on. He snaked his fingers under his hat to retrieve another pair of glasses to place on his face, identical to the ones that were just lost. 

For the first time since arriving in this topsy-turvy land, Eddie felt happy.

“I need you to know those pages will be filled, that’s what I’m here for,” The Hatter blurted in between quirky cackles and spins. It seemed that he had infinite decks in each pocket, due to cascading pirouettes of cards spewing in every direction as they danced. Some sparked and burst into flames as they were seized by oncoming breezes.

“You’re making no sense Hatter.”

He scooped an elated Eddie into his arms as he spun across the table, “Everyone has a story they want to sell, but yours is one that’s worthy to tell. I’m glad your stubborn ass found your way back to me.”

* * *

**_*TicTicTicTicTicTicTic*_ **

**[6 Is Halfway Past, With The Hatter At Last]**

“Stop spinning so fast, I’m going to be sick!” Eddie pleaded through laughter. He was serious though, if the Hatter didn’t stop his feverous twirls, Eddie was going to yack.

“But of course, your wish is my command,” And the Hatter walked with Eddie in his arms towards the end of the table where Stan was enjoying the music. Eddie had never asked him to put him down, just to stop spinning.

“Stan the Man! Did you come for tea, or for a show?”

“Definitely the show, Hatter,” Stan deadpanned while still swaying to the music.

“Both it is, then,” And he kicked a full cup of tea to slow directly in front of Stan. Stan’s cup of tea was a black blend that had two sugar cubes dissolved, with a dash of cinnamon. He lifted the cup, smelled it, and contently sipped in between light purrs.

The Hatter lowered a soft gaze to Eddie, “Count to ten.” 

Eddie looked at the 1/7 card in his hat and replied, “Okay, but I get tea after.”

“All the tea here is for you, that’s for sure, and for whenever you want _mio dolce amor_. Count to ten!”

Skeptically eyeing his giant carrier in squints, he decided to trust him.

“1.... 2.... 3.... 4.... 5.... 6.... 7-”

Eddie was cut off in his count by being hurled up by the Hatter, into the treetops. 

Vines earnestly unlooped from their resting places and shot towards Eddie to entangle him in a secure hold, midair. They wrapped around his legs, his arms, and torso to retract upwards, bringing him higher into the canopy. They tightened, causing Eddie to wince after screaming from being catapulted, already at a loss of breath. If he had an unchained arm, he would have popped a pill to calm his breathing; NOT the shrinking pills, he would have double, no, triple checked this time around.

The vines recoiled to weave Eddie through the branches to the very top of the forest clearing. Dragonflies chased each other in figure eights, spitting consecutively larger spews of fire to establish dominance. Shy of reaching the top though, the vines loosened their grip and dropped Eddie, giving him an unnecessary heart attack. A thickly woven hammock made of flora caught his fall, and continued to lift him until he broke the treeline. Irises bloomed at random on the hammock as he ascended. 

He sat up, and beheld a fantastically cartoonish caricature of Earth, a view of what was part of Derrensland. Serene mountains encased them in a forested valley, protecting what lay inside from a thundering storm on the offensive that loomed on the outskirts, both literally and metaphorically. Darkened cumulonimbus clouds collided and wrestled in the direction he intuitively knew he would have to travel. Two enormous moons were suspended in the sky in close proximity, one jaded with bounding red turbulence, the other yellow, sparkling an aura of electrified flares. When you blinked your eyes, the moons blinked back at you.

“They don’t understand privacy, those two.”

Eddie flinched from being startled by the Hatter, who was now crawling onto the hammock next to him. It sunk significantly lower from his added body weight; the man was a giant slinky.

“They’re beautiful. I’ve never seen two moons in the sky and so close up.” Eddie gawked.

“Just never tell ‘em a secret, they don’t know how to keep their mouths shut.”

A smirk emerged from Eddie, “Too late for that.”

“Ouch Eds, you wound me! You just met them, how could you tell ‘em that?”

Eddie was perplexed. He thought that telling the moons a secret was equivalent to blowing out the candles on your birthday cake with a wish; not being a real thing. He had wished for his own set of stallions and carriage since he was young, and the same wish never came true. 

“I don’t know what you’re babbling about, pish posh,” Eddie argued. 

“You told them I was dreadfully annoying, mhm…..”

“But, also a _delight,_ ” The Hatter cheesed, throwing an arm around the smaller boy. He picked one of the irises off the hammock to place it behind one of Eddie’s ear. The contrast of the indigo petals with Eddie’s blonde hair was a lovely addition, the Hatter thought.

Eddie went cherry red and developed a mild irritation, for the Hatter always seemed to just _know_ things. What Eddie had shared with the planets was true, however; he had, in fact, thought the Hatter was annoying, but also a comedic shelter that made him feel comfortable and delightfully distracted. The moons glinted with an immature satisfaction of knowing something they shouldn’t have. 

“I should wring your neck for tossing me like that.”

“‘Twas all for good reason, you know. Stanley wanted a show,” The Hatter naughtily sniggered.

“You _son of a b-_ ”

“Can I ask you a question?” He cut Eddie off.

“Do your worst, Hatter.”

The Hatter adjusted his spectacles, cracked his knuckles, and looked at Eddie with emerald eyes, “Why is a turtle, like a paper boat?”

Eddie thoughtfully contemplated his absurd question, “I don’t know, why is it?”

“I don’t know either, I was hoping you would. It will come to me with time, perhaps.”

“Perhaps it will.”

Rolling his eyes, Eddie relaxed his back to lay flat on the hammock and placed his arms behind his head. The climate was enjoyable, not nearly as humid and suffocating as it was back home. Being present while in the present was a rare occurrence; it was a gift. Anxiousness all too often consumed daily rotations, and without the perturbation of making involuntary life choices, he could breathe. Breathe from an irised hammock surveilling a ridiculous land, with a jester of a man that made him crack a genuine smile.

“You didn’t know the last time you came either, I’ve been waiting for the answer to my own riddle for ages.”

“I wish I could remember.”

“You do, you wouldn’t be back if you didn’t,” He said as he slouched his spine to rest on the hammock as well. Eddie swore that as the Hatter relaxed his spine next to him, the sound of a deflating accordion rippled.

They laid alongside one another gazing into the calm, infinite nothingness. Shooting stars, even in the light of day, traveled across the sky. The tranquility was cherished, knowing that the untroubled silence would not last for long.

The Hatter jolted up and snatched a large key ring that had been attached to his pants, putting it to his ear with concern. Time was not on their side.

Eddie slapped a hand to his face, and pushed it up until it went through his hair and massaged the back of his head, “Keys? What are they going to do without a door? Definitely not to tell time with.”

“Eds Takes His Meds, I hold these keys to open things with, doors and thoughts alike. They ought to work some places and spaces, but until then they’ll stay in my laces. Why else?”

There was no arguing with his logic, the Hatter was right.

Taking a firm hold of Eddie’s shoulders, he explained, “We need to go see my other friend. I believe he has something waiting for you, a big pointy something.” 

“I have a bad feeling about all this, I’ve never been trained in fighting, let alone _sword_ fighting.”

“The sword knows though, she’ll teach ya if you let her.”

“Let’s hope so, or I’m dead.”

“Dead? Not on my watch,” And the Hatter patted a zipped part in his waistcoat that contained his pocket watch. He stood on the hammock and lifted Eddie by the forearms so he was standing too.

“Getting down from here is a bit tricky, climb on my back and we’ll go down together.”

He wanted to say no, but looking over the side for the first time, he realized just how high up they actually were from the ground. Vertigo struck, and it made his stomach churn. The Hatter bent down so he could hop on his back, hooking his hands under the backs of Eddie’s knees that were a little shaky from his moderate fear of heights.

Securing his arms around the Hatter’s neck, he spoke, “Tha-Thanks for not tossing me down and having other shit catch me. I’m- uh, I don’t like heights very much."

“One time is enough for the day, now hold on tight, this stallion doesn’t have a lap belt.”

Eddie clenched his entire body, leaching to the Hatter in an iron clasp, earning a muted choke from his carrier. 

In a voice that was not his own, it was the deep raspy voice of a burly Scotsman, he choked out, “Not tha’ tight me lad, ya trynna’ fookin’ murduh meh?”

“Sorry, sorry. Better?”

“The Bloody Queen stands no chance, off wit de devil’s head! ‘Ere we go!” And he leaped off the hammock, hurtling down the layers of leaf and vine that Eddie had previously been cradled by. The smaller boy shut his eyes, not wanting to witness his death happen if the Hatter were to misstep or lose the confidence of their fall. 

His shoes boomed on the table, as they landed in the dead center. A few cups shattered just from the force their impact made. The January Hare, Mike, and Stan had all vanished, as well as the organ that had been playing.  

Eddie relaxed his limbs, and the Hatter released his hold of Eddie’s legs so he could stand on his own. They crossed to the other side of the table, stepped off, and began to walk.

“Ben’s castle is just over that mountain range you saw from up there. You’re going to love Benny boy! He’s a quiet, cherry pie.”

“Ben, huh. The White King’s name is Ben,” Eddie mumbled to himself.

The Hatter was undeniably loquacious, his mouth fueled by a boundless amount of thought needing escape from the mess that was his mind. Eddie reasoned that if the White King was quiet, they got along because the madman did the talking for the both of them.

“He built the castle himself too, it’s a masterpiece. I used to visit all the time before, well, you know.”

“ _I know...._?”

“Before the Queen summoned the Jabberwock, and took power. Damned thing, straight from Hell itself,” The Hatter shuddered. He put both fists out in front of him, turning them up, and when he opened them green fire momentarily combusted. 

Finally, Eddie understood what the monster was in Bill’s notebook, and it made the blood drain from his face. The Jabberwock was the Queen’s servant, following her every command to wreak havoc upon Derrensland. With both the blood thirsting Queen and the Jabberwock alive, their power was unmatched.

“When the Queen’s blood flows, everything will be as it was,” The Hatter said through maniacal laughs. God, he was nuts.

Picking up on Eddie’s uneasiness, the Hatter took one of Eddie’s hands in his own as they walked. Eddie welcomed the comforting gesture, as a promise that even if he had to face this horror, it wouldn’t be alone.

“I have full faith in you Eds, you’re the bravest person I know. If you could tell off that bitch once before, you can slay the red-headed fucker for good this time.”

Pushing a large frond aside from the path, it revealed a vast field scattered with flowers of all kinds. They walked hand in hand, appreciating each other’s company as they made their way to the castle. The Hatter swung their conjoined hands and began to beautifully sing songs Eddie had never heard before, even singing the instrumental parts perfectly.

The Hatter took off in a skipping run through the flowers, playing cards flying out of his pockets and pants. Lights exuded off of the flowers in his wake, emitting light of the same color that the flower was. Eddie took off with him in a fit of laughter, for the Hatter was not a very graceful runner. A downward sloped hill surprised them, and they tripped to tumble across its side laughing the entire way down its cushioned fern and grass surface.

Eddie crashed into the Hatter at the bottom of the hill, landing on his chest. The pollen from all the flowers made Eddie sneeze directly into the Hatter’s face.

“ _Shit_ , sorry,” Eddie giggled slightly embarrassed.

The Hatter’s irises went from green to violet, “The pollen’s pesky out here, it’d make anybody shed a tear.”

They stood and continued their walk, their journey long from being over and they had to keep a steady progress. They walked, and walked, and walked through more forest with them sharing light conversation, mixed in with jokes told by the Hatter. Before revealing Eddie the answer to a joke, he would reach into a pocket and blindly retrieve a joker card, handing it to Eddie that had the answer on it. Eddie learned that once he read it though, the card would burst into flames after getting a little burned from the first one. Getting burned from a playing card was one too many times in Eddie’s rule book. 

The path ended with a towering rod-iron, spiked gate embellished with white roses.

“Ah, here we are,” The Hatter said.

The Hatter pushed up his spectacles to look for his keyring of a hundred keys and sought the one he wanted. After sifting through about ten, he found the one he wanted. The key he chose matched the gate, being spiked and made of iron with a carved rose along its length. The Hatter opened the gate and they ascended up a cobblestone road lined with massive oaks, none of which had any leaves. The trees appeared to be in a stone diapause from a permanent winter, with ravens lurking on their branches waiting for the surrounding cold to dissipate. 

The White King’s castle sat atop a hill, being an intricately structured Victorian masterpiece, as the Hatter had previously disclosed. Clouds loomed over the neighboring oak forest, with all the castle’s features dusted with a layer of freshly fallen snow. The Hatter and Eddie threaded through a courtyard leading up to the castle’s entrance, that had elegantly masoned gravestones scattered throughout the clearing. Eddie quickly read as he walked by them, only catching first names.

_Georgie_

_Betty_

_Cheryl_

_Matthew_

_Edward_

_Chad_

_Veronica_

A mesh of unfortunate souls, taken at a time too early in their lives, Eddie thought. Hurled off a cliff? Suicide? Impaled? Neck sliced? _Devoured_? He hoped his name would never be added to the garden of headstones amongst the white courtyard. One could hope, at least.

After the courtyard, they walked down a marbled entrance with a high ceiling held up by Roman columns. Two doors, also made of marble, awaited at the end of the hallway. A white dove perched in a deep groove of the double doors judged the new arrivals.

The dove's mouth opened, releasing a man's soft voice, “Who’s there, name yourselves.”

“Benny boy!”

“ _Hatter_? I heard two, who’s the other?”

“Only our favorite human, let us in will ya?” 

“ _Eddie_? Ed- Eddie’s with you? He’s back, he’s finally back?”

“And about damn time, if I must say,” The Hatter said as he took Eddie’s hand once more. His semi-gloved hand squeezed Eddie’s, excited to share his friend with Ben after so many years apart.

The white dove closed its mouth, and the double doors slid open to allow the Hatter and Eddie entry. The hall they entered into was entirely made out of marble with a gold trim, tables and walls alike. The piano in the room to their right even looked to be made of marble. White, fur rugs decorated the floors in every room, along with landscape paintings hanging on the walls. Eddie was pleased not to see portraits, there was something about painted eyes that always left him unsettled.

A handsome man with silver hair and a white, satin robe approached Eddie and the Hatter. The skin exposed from the robe exposed numerous amount of harsh scars on his body, the most apparent being the one slashed vertically down the extent of his right eye.

He looked up at the Hatter, and then Eddie, “Nice.” 

The Hatter ran over to the White King and gave him an inordinate hug and kiss to the side of his face, “NICE, MISTER ICE!” 

Ben clapped a hand to the Hatter’s back with an upturned smile. He really did love his rhymes, no matter how silly they were. Finding any happiness during this age for Ben was a rarity and one that the Hatter could provide with the ethereal cost of company.

“Hi, Hatter,” Ben said. They both looked at Eddie, then continued to talk.

“Let us stay tonight? Tomorrow is going to be a hell hole, and we’ll need some shuteye.”

“Your favorite room is yours, don’t trash it this time,” Ben kindly asked.

Eddie intervened, “Uhm, your castle is beautiful, Ben. You did this yourself?”

“Indeed.” 

“Well, thanks for having us.”

“He’s been waiting for this, it’s my pleasure to help.”

The Hatter beamed his contagious gapped-toothed grin and led Eddie through the castle. He knew this castle like it was his own home, maneuvering through corridors and forked hallways, eventually leading Eddie to a spiraling glass staircase.

The Hatter would look back every so often to check on Eddie, and if he was breathing at a normal pace. Step by step, they made their way five stories high to the roof where a glamorous balcony overlooked the hill the castle rested on. Ivy grew around the railing, an unusual artifact to be found in a place where winter suffocated the entire area. A few monarch butterflies rested on pieces of ivy, where the snowed greenery was dense.

Resting his elbows on the banister, the Hatter scanned Ben’s winter wonderland. From this view, an iced over lake could be seen just south of the courtyard gardens. He held a peaceful energy, both thoughtful and positive.

“Have you thought about home much since you came back?”

Eddie was caught off guard. He hadn’t thought of home much, being preoccupied with the events of the strange land. But he sure did miss home, or parts of home. The home that had a certain predictability and comfort. Despite being unfair, and at times heartbreaking. A longing in his heart resurfaced, struggling to recall how he left home.

“Honestly, no. I ran, and ran. Until, I was brought here.”

The Hatter smiled, “And you’ll run back there, you have a lot to mend, Eds. A ring is just a ring.”

Eddie shook his head, had a series of thoughts from time’s past flash through his brain, then calmly leaned against the banister next to the Hatter. Slowly, memories were coming back to him.

“I remember you, ya know. You’re-uh- you’re my best friend.”

The Hatter’s orange bow tie ignited into flames, as he turned his head to look at Eddie. Snow was trickling from the sky, sprinkling on top of Eddie, the Hatter, and the entire balcony.

Bracing up from the banister, he reached for Eddie, enveloping him in a tangled embrace. He bent his head down to give him a gentle kiss on his forehead, pushing aside his blonde waves. His glasses imprinted against Eddie’s skin.

“You’ve been there since I was little, whenever I needed you. You were what I dreamt and visited, every time,” Eddie explained with his head tucked into the Hatter’s torso.

“And you’ll only need me for so much longer, too. But, I’ll always be there, always have been little Kasp.”

“So much longer?” Eddie sniffled.

“Yes, and soon you’ll realize just that. Just like you found your way back to me here, you’ll find me again.”

As the snow fell, they hugged each other on the open balcony. Doves cooed from the roof, watching the blue sunset from the hilltop. The temperature dropped, and any traces of heat iced over to spread an overbearing chill.

“All will be well, I promise you, only time will tell.”

* * *

**_*TicTicTicTicTicTic*_**  

**[5 Hail The Heart Lord, Get The Sword]**

The sun rose from the west, shining its rays on the fresh layer of snow on the White King’s castle. Clouds still hovered over, casting shadows that collided with the morning light. Birds woke, emerging from their resting places to sing by their innate circadian cycle.

“Eds! Wake up, wake up, wake up!” The Hatter called from outside Eddie’s room.

Eddie was not a light sleeper and certainly enjoyed sleeping in as much as he could push. It would take much more work to awake Eddie from his slumber, much more than the early rising birds of Derrensland. The Hatter came up with the only course of action he felt appropriate to handle this matter, being the most dramatic and unnecessary one.

Fire sirens blasted from outside the door, making Eddie’s entire room shake.

In a panic, Eddie jolted up from the bed and rolled off the side, smacking his face on the floor. His hair frizzed up, and eyes were bloodshot. He threw on his clothes and shoes and sprinted out of the door.

“Good mornin’ mist’ah, aren’t you looking put togeth’ah!” The Hatter greeted Eddie whilst wiggling his eyebrows. 

“FIRE? IS THERE A FIRE?”

“Hmmm, I have absolutely _no idea_ what you’re talking about. Have you dropped your bag of marbles? Need me to help you find it?” The Hatter asked through muffled laughs. He was obviously the source of the sirens and had no shame making it known that it was him.

Eddie dropped his guard and glared at the Hatter without amusement. Flipping him off, he then stormed past the giggling loon and made his way down the glass staircase.

The Hatter followed right behind Eddie, making the siren noise again but much quieter, earning more scowls from the boy in front of him. They found Ben in the kitchen reading a novel at one end of his grand table, dressed in a white and silver cuffed, regency tailcoat. The table had plates and lazy susans of breakfast foods carefully scattered; uncured meats, eggs (both scrambled and hard boiled), muffins, toasts, jams, jellies, preserves, sliced fruit, tea, juices.

Squealing with excitement, the Hatter ran to the table and shoved as much food in his mouth as he could with his bare hands. He traveled from one end of the table to the side Ben was at with a face full of jellied toast. Eddie used a plate to grab what he wanted but found himself gaping at the Hatter’s ability to scarf down food without falter.

Gulping down what he could, he placed a muffin under his top hat, and turned to Ben, “The best cook strikes again! Thank you, for your utmost hospitality my good friend.” He took his hat off and bowed, making the muffin that he had just put there fall out and roll across the floor.

Ben fondly smiled, and looked at Eddie with raised eyebrows, for he knew he was going to have to pick up that muffin himself later. They enjoyed the feast that Ben had prepared for them until Ben stood and gave both the Hatter and Eddie a look with a nod that said ‘follow me’.

The clicks of Ben’s boots echoed amongst the halls as he stepped, his coat trailing behind him from the wind of his pace. He walked into the east wing and glided up a wide staircase that led them into a library. This was the largest library Eddie had ever seen, and it must have taken the space of a quarter of the castle. In the center, an elaborate writing desk sat just under a set of stained glass windows depicting various scenes. The characters in the window moved, interacting with each other freely. Ben unlocked one of the desk’s drawers and pulled out a wearable pouch. The pouch was made of leather and was a shade of ivory.  

“Eddie, the simul sword shrinks when not being used. To keep it safe, here’s a pouch to wear around your waist, and it can only be opened by the person who wears it,” Ben explained. He handed the pouch to Eddie, who promptly secured it around his waist. Noticing his reflection in the window, he inspected his new accessory. He instantly loved it and hoped he’d never have to give it back. It felt right to have the article resting on his hip, something he never knew he needed, but now couldn’t see himself not having it.

“Yowza that’s a fancy fannypack, Eds. Suits you,” The Hatter deduced. Eddie hummed in agreeance.

“Thanks, Ben.”

“Mhm.”

Ben walked along the border of the bookshelves, tracing his fingertips in a wave along the book bindings. He stopped once his fingertips touched a white, leatherbound book without a title. He pushed it into the shelf as far as he could reach, which was all the way up to his shoulder, until a latch unlocked. The bookshelf rolled forward and moved to the side to reveal a marble vault that had an etching of a sword on the front.

Ben firmly spoke aloud the Latin phrase, “ _Cor meum ardet etiam._ ” 

The letters of the phrase illuminated on the vault as he spoke, to then rearrange and morph into its English translation:

 _My heart burns there, too_.

The vault made a series of noises that sounded like gears grinding and reeling off of chains. When the vault door extended outward and opened, Ben took a sharp intake of breath.

The vault was empty.

In a glass case where the sword should have been, the only item remaining inside was a bloodied letter, sealed with a wax anatomical heart.

The trio ran over to the case to retrieve the note. Ben ripped it open, and it flew out of its envelope to hover in front of them, with a woman’s tantalizing voice reading the words aloud:  

_Tiny Boy, Mad Hatter, & Dethroned King, _

_You slept soundly last night, I see. Right under your noses, the Knave came to retrieve what was mine. Fools! Idiot, fuckface fools! The sword belongs with me, and will never be found in time for Deadlight’s Day tomorrow, so you have few options._

_Edward, I speak directly to you now. Sacrifice yourself to me, and there won’t be any further issue. If you deny, I will devour the beating heart of every being in these lands, and make you watch. Men, women, children. Every. Single. One. You would be guilty of making each soul suffer, and perish from your cowardice. Their fear, by your cause, will make them that much more of a meal. And I’ll start with you....Hatter._

_Make the right decision. Your mommy raised you to make the right decision, didn’t she, Eddie Bear? My pet and I will be waiting._

_I am all that was, is, and ever will be, child._

_Come to the Queen._

_Come float._

 

_The Queen of Hearts,_

_Eater of Worlds,_

_Penny the Wise_

The letter began to drip blood, sopping the floor of the vault, until the paper fell and became the pool of blood itself, gurgling. The three shared a stunned silence, all staring at the red mess that stained the floor.

“We need to get that sword back,” Ben said in a quiet, but furious tone, retreating out of the vault and tracking through the blood without care of spreading prints across his castle floors.

Eddie couldn’t move. His shoes glued to the floor, with a stricken fear that seized his limbs from moving. The ice from the castle penetrated his bones, sending shockwaves to every tip of his body. The Hatter worriedly looked to Eddie, with glazed blue irises and severely dilated pupils.

He jumped over the pool of blood that started to spread and urged Eddie to go around before it was unavoidable to not step in. As they exited, the vault slammed closed, trapping the liquified letter inside.

Ben left a trail of red footprints, making it easy to follow where he went next. The Hatter and Eddie followed them out into the courtyard, next to the frozen over lake. It was curious to see that no matter how far Ben walked, the blood from his steps made a saturated print each time. White stables stood tall, neighs and hooves drumming the ground as they approached.

They proceeded by a row of golden stalls, each containing an albino Clydesdale. The horses had a pair of feathered folded wings, that must have had a wingspan of 30 feet when fully outstretched.

“Holy shit, is tha- is that a _pegasus_?” Eddie ogled. 

“Yessir, Ben has seven. Chuckalicious, huh?”

“Yeah, chuckalicious....The understatement of the century right there.”

Ben was at the end of the stalls, bridling the largest of the winged horses. It had a shining, silver mane, unlike the other pegasuses, matching Ben’s hair.

“This is my fastest girl, Silver. She’ll get you to the Queen’s castle swiftly,” Ben said.

As exhilarating as the thought of riding Silver through the sky was, Eddie, imagined the height of being that elevated in the clouds. He thought being in the canopy was sickening. Leagues into the stratosphere on a zooming pegasus sounded terrifying.

Ben pet the mane of Silver in nurturing strokes, and patted her back, signaling for the Hatter and Eddie to mount. The Hatter didn’t need any help up, easily lifting himself onto the back of the creature. He reached down to grab Eddie’s hands and placed him in front of his own body. Holding the reins on both sides of Eddie, he yanked on the left one encouraging their steed to turn as well.

“Take good care of her, and find the sword. I’ll handle the rest here, see you soon,” Ben stated with an inspiring confidence.

The Hatter nodded and sprouted an insane grin. Tapping his heel into the side of Silver and rattling the reins, he howled a booming direwolf cry. 

“HI-YO SILVER, AWAY!”

Silver bucked, and galloped down the hallway of golden stalls, pounding her wings for takeoff. The other pegasuses neighed in chants as they passed. Hurdling out of the stables and into the morning sun, Silver jumped off her snowed runway and ascended into the sky. Her wings beat furiously, creating a halo of powder that was sucked into their ascent.

Eddie wove his fingers into Silver’s mane, clenching for dear life. He peered over his shoulder, to see the Hatter exultantly pursuing greater and greater heights with constant whips of the reins. There was no fear in his face, thoroughly enjoying the icy winds that caused his pale face to go pink in blotches. His freckles twinkled, mirroring the suns they became closer to with every beat of Silver’s wings. He returned a forward position to keep himself from getting nauseous and didn’t dare look down. Vertigo would have made his body go limp, sending him over the side to plummet down to the ground, facing a certain death. And today was not the day to be the newest addition to the White King’s garden of headstones.

Instead, he faced forward with his eyes clamped shut, reveling in the experience of barrelling through cottoned plumes on a beast he would have thought to be an impossibility just a day before. Learning that impossibilities were, in fact, a natural occurrence and took place daily, was a humbling realization; a lesson that would resonate with Eddie for the remainder of his life after having lived an impossibility the first time. There was a courage in finding hope in a seemingly impossible situation, and he felt a tinge of guilt having forgotten the words his father had lived by.

_Impossibilities happen every day my son, you just have to open your eyes to see them._

The words were spoken clearly in his head in Frank’s voice, and Eddie obliged by raising his eyelids. A blanket of pink clouds layered below them in thick swirls, forming scattered columns that Silver had to weave through. They passed through a few, going blind from the pink mist, and overwhelmed with fresh aromas of magnolia oil. It was an otherworldly view, and Eddie wiped his knowledge of being miles in the sky. He softly pet the mane of Silver with a hand he unclasped from her mane, thanking her for her service.

“Wanna take her for a spin?” The Hatter asked from behind. 

“I think, I-I think I would,” And he tenderly took the Hatter’s offering. He looked back for the second time for reassurance, and the Hatter fed him a warm smile. Eddie held all the playing cards now and felt a gratitude towards the Hatter for trusting him with the control.

The Hatter reached one arm around Eddie’s waist to maintain both of their stabilities and leaned forward to grasp his other hand onto the front of the saddle. Eddie’s insides warmed from the security of the Hatter’s arm keeping him in place. He felt safe, safer than he had been on the ground while soaring through the pink clouds. He chuckled to himself, realizing that a notorious madman made him feel safe, but then again stranger things have happened this morning. 

Lightly tugging on the reins, he found his bearings for how tightly he had to instruct Silver. He cautiously veered to the left, then the right, then slightly up, then slightly down. In a surge of impulsiveness, Eddie wanted to test out Silver’s abilities.

“HI-YO SILVER, AWAY!” Eddie mimicked the Hatter’s previous cheer and kicked into the side of the Pegasus.

The Hatter cackled and tightened his grip around Eddie significantly.

Lifting herself with an upbeat of strong wing power, Silver doubled her velocity, shooting forward like an incoming comet. The Hatter had to use the hand gripping the saddle to hold on to his top hat, tightening the arm around Eddie even more so he didn’t fly off. 

Both men shrieked in gleeful laughter, zooming across the sky. This move may have been irresponsible and potentially fatal, but it was one of the highlights of Eddie’s life thus far. Stan’s nightingales appeared on both sides of Silver and chirped in disapproving scolds. Silver slowed her flight at the birds’ request, regaining a safe speed. The birds really did take after Stan, safety oriented, but condoning to a scaled amount of controlled chaos. At this speed, the Hatter clenched his legs to Silver’s sides and lifted both his arms to string his semi-gloved fingers along the underside of passerby fluff.

The pink clouds below them separated, opening a valley ridden with blackened soil that was burdened with death. A tangible, cursed entity emptied the land of any surrounding life. The landscape was barren, except for a black and red fortress lying at the opposite end, protected by deceased forest. The Hatter lowered both arms to wrap around Eddie’s midsection, instinctively.

“Welcome to Hell.” The Hatter attempted to joke.

Eddie gripped the reins in a white-knuckled plea. This was a place of unfantasized nightmares, and he didn’t even know what the Queen or her mutant acolyte looked like yet. The Queen’s voice haunted him and continued to do so, making appearances in his subconscious as she had when he fell through the tree’s abstracted wormhole.

“ _Come float, float, float,_ ” Softly rang in Eddie’s ears.

Silver dashed down to the brink of the dead forest outlining the castle. She paced and made nervous whinnies, clearly uncomfortable with the energy possessing the area. The Hatter dismounted and helped Eddie off of the massive steed. The second they were off, Silver galloped away, beating her wings to take flight back home. Besides Stan’s nightingales circling close by, Eddie and the Hatter were alone. There was no plan, no strategy. They were at the edge of an estranged castle, without any idea or talk of attack.

Eddie anxiously looked to the Hatter, “What now?”

The Hatter kinetically charged his hands creating sparks, “We improvise. The best plans are no plans.”

He whistled to the birds in their native tongue, giving them unknown instructions. One of the birds gave the Hatter attitude, and he pinched its beak while it was hovering to silence it. All three nightingales then flew over the castle’s walls, away from sight.

Loose feathers separated from their bodies to float raising with gusts, curling into its waft, summoned into the depths of the woods.

Scurrying his lengthy legs, the Hatter took off to lurk along the border of the castle, searching for an opening, hopefully reaching the front entrance without being noticed. He was a brilliantly deceptive illusionist as long as he wasn’t seen. Eddie quickly scooted his shorter legs to chase after the Hatter and his unspoken agenda.

Voices curdled around the corner, on the other side of a moat. They made conversation composed of sickening sexist remarks and homophobic slurs. If this was the common conversation that they happened to eavesdrop upon, Eddie never wished to hear the strangers’ in-depth personal confessions.

Placing a finger to his lips, the Hatter made a quiet shush as he hunched down. He turned to Eddie with his finger still placed over his chapped lips and mouthed, “ _Trust me._ ”

“Card guards! Breach in the outskirts! Assemble, you lazy fuckers!” The Hatter screamed in a voice that identically matched the Queen of Hearts. He must be a sentient lyrebird in a man’s body.

The guards, who happened to be a living 8 of spades and 10 of diamonds, rushed with their spears down the bridge, abandoning their post. They cursed and clumsily ran the path to the edge of the forest.

The Hatter waved his hands, asking Eddie to hop on his back again. Eddie did so, and the Hatter leaped after a running start across the moat that intended to separate invaders from gaining entry. However, the moat was not constructed to keep out a 6’7” man with an impressive jump. The Hatter could be very ungraceful, but also performed stunts that no one else could have ever succeeded in doing. He was a true, paradoxical anomaly.

He let Eddie climb off of his back, and they rounded the corner beyond the gates, gaining entry into the Queen’s lair of horrors. Weaving, thorn bushes made an archway into a bleak piazza lined with hedges that hummed with pleading whispers of unseen souls. The voices swam about, with full sentences unable to be made out. Only their meshed tones were understood, bleeding of hopelessness and eternal pain. There were no other guards marching throughout the open space, so Eddie and the Hatter crept around the edge, avoiding getting torn from the protruding spikes of the arching branches. They stayed vigilant, kept quiet, and communicated with body language and reading each others’ lips. 

Hedges narrowed, forcing them into a gardened maze. Curling shrubbery quaked and shifted positions so that new corridors were exposed, and others closed. They were trapped by a living maze, moving by an unknown algorithm.

The Card Guards ought to have caught on by now that they had been fooled, and on their way back to alert others of their Deck. Eddie and the Hatter had to hurry, or risk getting caught, and inevitably executed by getting their hearts ripped out of their chests while still alive. They had to move swiftly, but more importantly, smartly.

The Hatter made a peculiar decision. He stopped, analyzed the hedges, sniffed the air that wreaked of garbage, sat down, and placed his pocket watch to his left ear.

“Are you mad!" Eddie silently mouthed. 

Rumbling from the hedges signified that they were going to move again, and the Hatter sat patiently and listened to the tics of his watch. There was a strategy to the maze, and the Hatter being a master of riddled games, made figuring it out his new challenge.

Eddie paced in front of the Hatter, and fidgeted with his hands as he whispered, “We need to go jackass, do you want to die? _Get up!_ ”

He ignored Eddie, concentrating solely on the passing tics, and twirled one of his purple locks. After the hedges stopped, the Hatter continued to listen.

Extremely frustrated and with agitated fear building in him, Eddie tugged on the Hatter’s arm for him to get up, “Please Hatter, we need to go, they’re going to kill us if you don’t. _Please._ ”

The ground shook again, and the thorny hedges made another calculated shift.

The Hatter victoriously grinned up at Eddie with the pocket watch still pressed to his head, “Twenty-seven.”

“ _What_?”

“The plants, Eds! The plants! Every twenty-seven tics _they move!_ ”

“For being clinically insane, you sure are a genius, I hate to admit,” Eddie contemptuously smiled back at him, and crossed his arms.

Three nightingales flew over a neighboring hedge, spoke into the Hatter’s unoccupied ear, and retreated opposite the Hatter and Eddie in the center of the current passageway. They rushed to get back to Stan, having their own set of plans formulating.

His eyes grew to an ungodly size, showing the whites. He put his watch away, pulled up his mismatched socks, and jumped to his feet. More cards flew out of his pockets.

“Do you want the good bad, or bad bad news first,” The Hatter asked.

“Good.”

“We know where the sword is, thanks to Stan’s minions. It’s in the maze, and we’re close. All we gotta do is make one more left, and two rights when the hedges move again.”

“It’s a start, now the bad.”

“It’s down an enchanted sewage well no person can physically pass through.”

“So there’s no way we’re getting the sword, what could possibly be worse than that?”

The Hatter gulped, “It’s with the- uh, the Jabberwock. Oh fock.”

“Okay now the bad bad bad news,” He continued as he started to run down the opening of the newly emerging left corridor. 

Eddie ran slightly behind him, “There’s _more_?!”

“There are guards everywhere in the maze, and the demon bitch knows we’re here!” He yelled from ahead.

Red painted claws shredded out of the hedge, grappled Eddie’s face and torso, and pulled him into its insides. He was in vantablacked darkness, and heard bells jingle as he struggled against his captor’s spiny arms.

Hot breath and drips of acidic saliva poured down the side of his face, as a woman with a piercingly familiar voice hissed, “I could smell your fear, Wheezy.”

Fangs punctured his neck, and he blacked out.

* * *

**_*TicTicTicTicTic*_ **

**[4 Chaos Will Ensue, You’ll Float Too]**

“Tiny boy, wake up tiny boy,” The Queen’s voice carried from the head of the throne room. There was a crude, enthused sneer framed in red lipstick that upturned to expose pearly, filed teeth.

Eddie’s entire body ached and stung from the venom that poisoned his veins. Painful inflections zapped under his skin, causing him to twitch in mild convulsions. The toxic injection given from hypodermic fangs embodied the sensation of the limbo space between hot and cold. Shocks intensely pinched his nerves, indecipherably feeling blazing hot and numbingly antarctic.

His head hung well below his shoulders, his wrists chained to the arms of the chair he sat in, and he groggily blinked to regain consciousness. The chair was constructed of human bones and twine, splinting when he shifted in his seat. His vision had not completely returned to him, so when he lifted his head the chamber around him appeared as blackened blurs of spiked spandrels and crimson diacritics.

“Mornin’ fucker,” The Knave said, posted to the left of the Queen. 

Eddie went to wipe his eyes but was unable to from the restraints. The metal cuffs were greased in a mucus slime allowing some leverage, but only enough for slight rotation. And some movement in and out if he didn’t clench his fists.

“Where the _fuck_ am I,” Eddie slurred.

Penny the Wise had her legs crossed sitting upright on a throne of skulls. There were skulls of all kinds supporting her; woodland creature skulls, skulls of giants, incomplete skulls that couldn’t be distinguished what they were, human skulls that ranged from adults to infants, and a completed dragon skeleton that wrapped around the mound. The chamber reeked of forgotten corpses, clumped for mere decoration. Respect for the dead was not a virtue here, degraded by this boisterous declaration of dominance.

Her straight, red hair cascaded down her chest and passed her hips, their fibers fluctuating boundless of gravity as if she was underwater. Face creamy white and untempered complexion, where reddened scarification wounds cut vertically down both eyes and joined with the edges of her mouth in a curvature that moved with her smile. She was otherworldly, demonically charming, raveled intrinsically by a false exterior of dark magic to mask the devil caged within.

Evil, orange eyes glared at Eddie.

“Home,” She spoke.

She stood from the throne of victims, and floated towards Eddie. Her heels sent loud reverberations through the stone floor of the gothic castle. The train of her gown never touched the ground, undulating in waves of space. Red pompoms in the shape of roses descended from her cleavage to the bottom of the gown, glowing as she stepped.

Her hand now roughly cradled the side of Eddie’s neck she had infected, “Welcome home.”

He flinched away, but she sliced her sharpened fingernails over his soft skin and through his hair. The Queen hated his hair, hated his skin, hated his ability to resist, hated everything that Eddie was. And, hated passionately the love he kept locked away in his heart. It was sickening and filled her with rage. The more the hate boiled at the base of her throat, however, the tastier the meal would be. A selfless heart was a prized supper, and she wanted to play with her challenging meal before feasting.

“They told you he would lead you to an unfortunate end, you should have listened. Ran back to your mommy and the Hydra when you had a chance. You need them you weak bitterling, don’t you? Now look where _he’s_ led you,” She said disgustingly sweet.

Vitamee and Vitadee sniggered from behind Eddie and whispered nonsense in each other’s ears behind cupped hands. They each dug a hand into his shoulder, bowed to the Queen, and retreated back into the castle through the main doors of the throne room, locking it behind them upon exiting.

More of the memories from the times he last spent in Derrensland would make guest appearances with unkind triggered reminders happening in the present. Eddie hated the Queen just as much as she hated him. She had terrorized blips of his youth implacably, uninvitingly invaded lucid dreams with malice through recurring sleep paralysis. While he was able to love unmeasurably, he could hold a nasty grudge just as passionately.

Eddie found his eyesight, and furiously glowered at the Queen, “You’re wrong, and if you don’t think he’s coming you’re more of a clown than I made you for last ti-" 

She used a jagged fingernail to swiftly slice the bottom of Eddie’s lip open. He cringed but maintained seething eyes that had no grimace of a cower. 

“But, I’m _always_ right. Ask the others,” She asserted panning aside to her mound of death. She spat in his face, burning the places on his skin where spit landed.

He violently coughed, projectiling droplets of blood on the front of the Queen’s neck ruff and face. His mouth dripped beads of red, and he spat back at the Queen to paint her with more of his blood. Eddie finagled with his restraints, realizing that with manipulation he could slip in and out of the slimy holds with some added pain. There was hope, and that was all he needed.

A slow smirk rose on Eddie’s lips, “Not this time. Your blood is going to flow, and it's going to be by my hands.” He began to speak as madly as the Hatter with his sullied rage. Stubborn to face any sort of defeat, he verbally lashed the Queen as if she were any other tormentor to sally.

Straightening the jeweled crown on her head, she slouched a thorny vertebral column down to Eddie’s eye level. She gripped his cheeks, and shrieked a shrill laugh, “You _queer_ , even if by some chance you get the sword you won’t be alive in time to use it.”

“Nothing’s not impossible, your _majesty,_ ” He rallied.

Her smile split her face in a cleaving tear, as her nails punctured into Eddie’s flesh. All her teeth elongated and ripened to a rotten yellow, sharpening at the tips. There was a lust for bloodshed behind her frenzied flickering, a frenzy a shark undergoes when a kill is cornered for slaughter.

A snarky grin appeared behind the Queen, hovering alone. Although no eyes were visible, the twinkle of a wink dinged where a face should have been. A beige and white tail wrapped around the Queen’s ankles, yanking her to the floor, slamming her face on the corner of Eddie’s chair on her way down.  

Eddie took the opportunity to slip his hands from the metal clasps and leaped out of the bone chair to the double doors at the other end of the throne room.  

Stan’s full body formed alongside him, and he quickly reached into his pant’s pocket while running to hand Eddie a trinket, “I went through a lot of trouble to get this Eddie, don’t fuck this up.”

Even in the hurry, he was, Stan neurotically wiped the shrunken simul sword on his shirt to shine it first. Stan cheekily smirked and placed the sword in Eddie’s hand, “No person can physically pass through that hole in the ground, huh? Good thing I’m no person.”

After a ruffle to Eddie’s head, Stan’s body evaporated, leaving a conglomerated tornado of white birch leaves and brisk ocean mist. Eddie opened up the pouch around his waist Ben had given him, and put the weapon in an inside pocket, closing it once more. He wished he had enough time to properly thank Stan and whomever else helped him get the sword. A raincheck was noted, needing to be upheld when he was given chance.

The Queen lifted herself from the floor, patting her face in between ugly, angered tears. Her teeth had elongated to an alarming length, worse than an angler fish’s frightening set of chompers.

“Knave, blibbering pansy, GET HIM!” She screamed. She rose from the ground, trembling in the air with vexation.

The Knave sprung into action and clumsily sprinted toward Eddie, as he tried to fling open the chamber doors. Eddie wished he had in possession the Hatter’s massive keyring, surely one would have worked to open them. But, alas no luck with just pulling. 

Glass shards scattered across the grand hall, with the windows behind the Queen’s throne shattering from an incoming assailant. Every person ducked and shielded their face from the explosion of glass. A tumbling shard as large as a tugboat barreled in front of the Knave, and cleanly sliced off his right arm on its upward bounce. Red relentlessly spilled. He keeled gripping his nubbed limb with the other arm, screaming over a swamped spigot of his own blood.

Hooves swatted the Queen out of the air to hit the ground in a pounding gallop. The creature slid behind Eddie and collided with the chamber doors, and as it galloped to the opening it just made, its rider reached down to grasp Eddie around the waist to pull him atop.

“Death? Not on my watch, Eds,” The Hatter jested after giving a firm kiss to the top of Eddie’s blonde waves.

Silver flew out of the castle and into the sky, leaving behind a butchered Knave and fuming Queen of Hearts that was engaging in an enraged temper tantrum of electricity bolts. Her angered zaps lit up the inside of the throne room, and fired out towards Silver’s escape with Eddie and the Hatter. Silver dodged the bolts, except for one that took off a few inches of hair from her tail.

After they were out of range of the Queen’s bolts and back into the safety of the clouds, Eddie straddled Silver, and rested his head on her mane in relief. Silver whinnied in satisfaction, content to have Eddie peacefully resting on her. Eddie knew the Queen would choke on her words. The Hatter had come for him, and did significant damage to her right hand, dimwitted following in the process and he couldn’t have been more grateful.

“I knew you’d come back for me,” Eddie stated with his face still in Silver’s mane.

“It’s been me and you, you and me, forever and always. I would die before I left you behind in that place. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it will forever stay,” The Hatter said putting a hand on Eddie’s back.

Eddie’s insides warmed at the Hatter’s touch, feeling that warmth spread throughout his body to each finger and toe. His touch healed the remaining traces of ice lingering from the Queen’s venom, replacing her hate with his love. Eddie sat up and turned to give the Hatter a genuine smile, one that sparkled even without teeth showing.

“I have something for you, something I think you’ve been missing,” The Hatter said reaching into his coat pocket. Out came a very small piece of folded paper, that looked like it had been torn out of where it came from. The Hatter’s gloved hand made the piece of paper look comically tiny. With a blush on his face, he handed it to Eddie. He had a glimmer in his eyes that was hopeful, anticipatory.

Eddie graciously took the piece of paper and opened it to its blank side. Before flipping it over to read the message, he tensed.

A memory, clear.

Slowly reaching his other hand into his vest pocket he retrieved a little book, one that could have belonged to a house elf. His breath hitched, and he turned the cover to read the first page as if he was reading it for the first time: “Richie & Eds”, with at the bottom “Forever & Always”.

_Richie._

He turned the cover page to see the two jagged edges where pages two and three had been torn out. Flipping the paper the Hatter had just given him, he positioned it to fit perfectly with the margin of the second page and it sealed itself upon touch. Eddie’s breathing became more hindered, and his eyes welled with tears as he read the scribbled poem:

_My heart, an open casket_

_Black vines frame a tortured face_

_They were touched by you_

_Now, violet petals in their place_  

Turning his body to look up at the Hatter, whom also had moisture in his vibrantly violet eyes that stared into Eddie’s soft brown ones, his heart fluttered like an undomesticated animal in his ribcage. Those violet eyes. Eddie finally understood those violet eyes, complementing his purple curls, that at times from the side illusioned as aquamarine. Green was the natural shade, blue was for sorrow, red would be for anger if he ever saw it. Violet was for love, and Eddie knew well enough that this was truth. He knew well enough.

“Why hello there, Richie.”

Richie’s bow tie ignited into flames, and he reached a needy hand to fondle the side of Eddie’s face, circling his thumb on his cheek. Eddie melted into his touch, leaning his head back to get closer, he wanted nothing more than to be as close to him as possible.

This was Richie’s touch, the touch that could revive him from any trouble, any despair. Those were Richie’s eyes. Richie’s gapped grin. Richie’s freckles. Richie’s rhymes and ill humor. Richie’s dumb playing cards. Richie’s indiscernible cursive on the missing page. Richie, his best friend he grew up with, whom he fell unconditionally in love with. This was Richie, and at last, he could surpass the memory fog Derrensland had burdened him with.

“Finally, there you are Eds. _My_ Eds.”

Lowering himself, Richie pressed his lips to Eddie’s for a long overdue kiss. Time stopped for their married lips, the haze of lover’s reunion blinding any other worry. They would face what lies ahead together, in success or in failure. They would do it together, as they had always done everything, and would continue to do in the future. Forever and always, a commitment meant full-heartedly.

A ring, a looped piece of gold, was just a ring.

* * *

**_*TicTicTicTic*_ **

**[3 Is Third To Last, A Shadow Is Cast]**

The sun was setting under the pink clouds, turning them a wispy shade of indigo. The stars above were becoming more apparent and reflecting on the tops of the clouds as Silver flew over them. They glided over the painted sky, hands clasped together, for the remainder of the sunset until the clouds were a darkened blue and they became less thick in their blanketed cover.

They roamed over the mountain range separating them from the Queen’s barren valley and glimpsed Ben’s winter castle atop the hill they left it. Other figures could be seen from the sky wandering in the courtyard and eventually entering the castle. One of the figures did cartwheels, as she entered the castle doors, cackling.

Silver slowed her pace and began her descent, hovering momentarily before planting her feet at the gates of the stables. Richie dismounted with individual cards loosely falling from his pockets, and Eddie gracefully hopped off on his own on the same side. He was proud of himself to not need assistance this time, and Richie additionally revealed a proud smirk.

Richie snaked one arm over Eddie to rest over his shoulders, pulling him close to his lanky body, and they trod through the snow from the stables to the front doors of the castle to reconvene with Ben and the company invited.

The bloody footprints left by Ben from the Queen’s letter were still visible. They were not as saturated as before, but still visible under new layers of fallen snow.

Upon entering the white and gold trimmed hallways, Ben greeted them with open arms. He prayed to an indeterminate god that they would return without fatal injuries, but couldn’t guarantee himself that treasure with the evil they had to walk into. So upon seeing the duo, he took both Eddie and Richie into his arms for a warm embrace; a fond gesture he did not initiate often. 

Richie was bewildered by the crowd he saw in the solar of Ben’s manor. He had been the only person to be invited to Ben’s castle since he could remember when Eddie left for the last time he was in Derrensland, except for Eddie himself. The occasion must have been urgent, and devoid of any other option. 

“H-H-Huh-Hatter, you’re late ah-as always, my favorite f-fuh-ucking idiot.” 

Richie ran over to the raised table to Bill, who was perched on a sunflower, pot-puffing on his hookah that seemingly traveled everywhere with him. He picked Bill up and gave him a bunch of gentle kisses, with Bill squirming and stuttering curses through muffled laughs. The January Hare, Mike, Stan and his nightingales, the White King, and Bill were present in the solar. Bev somehow found her way to the top of a massive bookshelf and was kicking her legs back and forth, knocking off books with her heels. She scowled at the novel she had open and was skimming. _Dracula_ was not to her liking, and she chucked it.

There were seven in that room. Seven is a lucky number.

“Big Bill, what a pleasure! Are you tinier than usual, because last time I forgot to measure!” Richie mused. Eddie laughed at Richie’s rhyme, with finally someone else being tormented for their short stature rather than himself. Stan cracked a smile as well.

“P-p-put me down-n, thi-is is important-t,” Bill responded but still smiling.

Richie put Bill back on the sunflower, ready for directions. Even though Bill was only three inches tall, he held great power in the words and advice he gave. He was respected, and their counselor for every affair.

Ben took a breath and spoke to everyone, “Deadlight’s Day is tomorrow. We have the simul sword, and the help we could afford to get.” 

“ _I must say_ , what a group you’ve compiled Ben,” Stan said sarcastically. The nightingales perched around him pecked at his skin disapprovingly, getting an apologetic wince out of Stan. 

“Get a good night’s rest, tomorrow holds uncertain casualties. Hopefully none, but we can’t be sure,” And Ben glanced at Mike, who anxiously agreed with a shrug.

Richie, who was now at Eddie’s side again, gripped at his arm for comfort. As attention drawing and quick-mouthed as Richie embodied, he looked to Eddie for strength, being a brave spitfire who could weaken strongholds with a stare. Small, but undeniably fierce and never a force to be reckoned with. With the simul sword in his protected pouch, Eddie felt a source of power but pondered how he was planning on using it. Once again he was not a trained warrior, but he felt confident that with the sword’s guidance he could find the courage to learn. He had to.

“But, the Jabberwock Ben. _Benny_. What the fuck do we do about that?” Bev blatantly asked from the bookshelf, twiddling her fingers in her lap.

“He’s much less of a concern than the Queen, Bev. Without her, he’s nothing. Green fire and all.”

She nodded and cracked her knuckles. The January Hare may have seemed like a person absent of rationality, but she latched onto the discourse knowledgeably and thoughtfully plotted her attack in her disbanded brain. She had a strategy brewing, bubbling to burst a bubble of dubious disarray. It would unfold with time, undoubtedly. 

Insane? Yes. Unintelligent? A bold assumption to presume.

Stan raised a poignant finger in the air, “Ben, will the Shell be used? You know why I’m asking, I have messages to send if so. It will be the first, so don't underestimate if it's necessary.” 

“ _Shell_?” Eddie asked confused.

“Yes, we’ll meet there at dawn. I know _she’ll_ be there,” Ben answered.

Richie lowered his windblown lips to brush against Eddie’s ear, “The Turtle’s Shell, its a space between the two castles. An unclaimed, neutral space of checkered land.”

Stan whispered to the nightingales, and they flapped above him, descending down the halls in screeches of chirps amongst themselves. They had friends to negotiate with, gorges away. With a salute from his forehead, Stan stood up and evaporated.

“Bevvie, you’ll need to get all your knives sharpened,” Ben smittenly suggested, with soft words. Ben beheld the January Hare as an irredeemable prize, a beautiful and chaotic life form. She was as insane as the Hatter, maybe even more so, but utterly fearless. The White King watched her kick books off his shelf and pull out pieces of her personal armory from her sleeves, entranced with her known expertise and willingness to pledge herself to the greater cause.

She winked and pulled out a dagger to throw and precisely hit a painted portrait across the room in between their eyes. A perfect hit.

“Good, I knew I could depend on you,” Ben continued with a shy smile. 

The rest of the party emptied into the halls and up different cases of stairs to their rooms. Mike carried Bill to his separate room. Richie led Eddie up to his favorite room above the same glass staircase, the one he had spent in the previous night, and the one he had desired to spend in every night before that in Ben’s castle. The only safe space he had, since once having his own home. The room was embellished with silks of ocean colored hues that congregated around a chandelier in the center of the ceiling. Whites, blues, greens, and purples. The seething fire that burned Richie’s heart made him admire the cool palette of fabric, and relax, as a polarity to the flames dancing around his organs in a constant symphony. The colors were a lullaby, without sound or word.

“Do you- uhm, like it? It’s my favorite room in the entire castle,” Richie hesitantly asked Eddie upon entering the room. Richie’s eyes flickered around the room, in new appreciation as he saw Eddie’s body grace his favorited aesthetic space.

“I love it, Richie, I really do, the colors are serene. Did you design this ‘favorite’ room by any chance?” Eddie asked with a coy expression.

Richie straightened his bow tie, “Well yes I did, so thank you very much Eds Takes His Meds.”

Eddie plopped himself on the bed and closed his eyes. After nearly escaping the Queen in their last encounter, he worried how tomorrow would ensue. Would he be able to slay the Queen? The Jabberwock? Would others get hurt? Die? Would _he_ die? He didn’t know, and the vile thoughts made his stomach churn.

Richie laid next to Eddie as he thought with his spectacles pushing farther up his nose, “It will all be okay. If anyone can do this, I know you can. And I’ll be right next to you the whole time. We all will.”

“I’m.... _scared,_ ” Eddie admitted.

“You’d be madder than me if you weren’t. Did you see those fuckin’ teeth? And uh-....I am too.” Richie continued. “But, let me tell you something.” 

“Hmm?”

“I love you. I love you, more than anything in any world. And I’m more afraid of losing you, than of that bitch.”

Eddie hadn’t heard those words in what seemed a millennia. Those words held a great strength, they could give enough courage to get him through just about anything. A simple ‘I love you’ was a sacred prayer. One that couldn’t be torn away from him, even if his physical form would perish. It was an infinite vow, that could never be soiled or defiled.

“I love you too, Richie. Always, always will.”

Rolling over and scooting his body closer to Richie’s, Eddie tucked himself into the taller man’s side, laying his head on Richie’s chest. Richie tenderly put his arm around him and moved his hand up and down Eddie’s back in a soothing motion. He hummed into Richie’s chest, thankful for the closeness and the smell of peppermint still on his clothes and skin. Perhaps he just always smelled like peppermint candies.

The moons peered at them from the window, snooping like they always did. Shadows that the moons’ light cast on the trees outside of their quarters snuck into the bedroom, creating dancing water ripples along the inside fabrics. If you listened intently, you may even hear waves hitting a distant shoreline. Eddie and Richie fell asleep in their cuddled position, listening to faint ocean currents the room played for them. Their heartbeats and breathing aligned, rising and falling, sleeping soundly throughout the night before the stir the red sun Deadlight’s Day would convoke.

* * *

 

**_*TicTicTic*_ **

  **[2 for Deadlight’s Day, Show Me the Way]**

Eddie awoke and felt sufficiently rested after a decent night’s sleep in Richie’s arms. But this morning, Richie was not where he was last. In his place, was another folded piece of paper. It had been torn out of a little notebook, and Eddie immediately knew the source. He walked over to the windowsill with the paper grasped in a shaky hand, and took out the little book from his vest pocket, flipping past the cover page, then the second page that held a poem. The _first part_ to a poem. The sun outside just above the horizon was a deep red, daunting in its character, turning a portion of the sky a matching shade. It was a sun that leashed danger with it.

The page in Eddie’s hand sealed itself to the torn margin of the third page, leaving little sparks, and words scribbled themselves on the face as if they were being written at that very moment. Eddie read them aloud as the phantomed author wrote:

_I’ll give you my eternity_

_Until my watch tics its last_

_You see me as I am_

_I’ll return to you, from wherever how vast_  

He silently read the poem another five times through. And then another time. It was Richie’s handwriting, and his heart soared with the poeticism of the words written just for him. He put the open book to his chest, clutching it as its own life force. He truly did love this man, with every ounce of his being. Without hesitation, he would sacrifice his life for Richie, whether a hastened or incredulous end. Being in love entailed few rules, but if emotions plead true, one would tredge to world’s end for the other.  

Long arms wove themselves around Eddie’s midsection, and a chin rested on top of his head. More wafts of peppermint.

“Good mornin’ little sug’ah. Sleep well?” Richie asked.

“I am not _little_ , you giant,” Eddie teased.

“Ah I forget you’re not an early bird. Just a cute, cranky nightjar.”

Eddie shoved his elbow into Richie’s ribs, but did so with a giggle. He turned around and did a hop to snatch the spectacles off the end of Richie’s nose, spinning them around his index finger. When Richie bent down to grab the glasses back, Eddie gave him a quick kiss that he serendipitously manipulated. Richie’s freckles twinkled on their reddened canvas.

“A blind giant now.”

“Edward Kaspbrak, I do say! Heretic thief! Mutinous scoundrel!” Richie said in a pirate’s booming roar.

Eddie took off down the hallway banshee laughing, with Richie at his heels in hot pursuit. As he ran down the stairs, Richie slid down the railing at a quicker speed than Eddie’s lopes, placing him directly in front of Eddie at the bottom of the stairs. Of course, whorls of playing cards escaped from his pockets on his ride down. If Richie didn’t know the castle like the back of his hand, catching Eddie would have been close to impossible. Eddie thudded into Richie, with his face splatting into his waistcoat. Although much smaller, his strength was a surprise and Richie had to wrestle the glasses out of Eddie’s grip, nearly toppling to the floor in the process.

“Do that again matey, and I’ll be throwin’ yer booty overboard,” Richie mocked, then tossed the spectacles out of a wavering bay window. He lifted up his top hat, pulling out an identical pair of spectacles, fixing them to his nose.

“You’re _ridiculou-_ ” Eddie tried to finish but was scooped off the ground and onto Richie’s shoulder.

“We’ve got business to attend to, enough with your monkey business!”

Richie manhandled a kicking Eddie down the castle’s foyer, and back into the solar where the meeting was held the previous night. Everyone was already in there, except for Stan and the nightingales. They walked into a room that infiltrated an ambiance that was heavily apprehensive but was lightened with the endearing sight.

“Who ordered one Eds, à la carte?”

“Me, me, me!” Bev exclaimed while raising both arms.

“Put the poor guy down, Hatter,” Mike said with a chuckle.

“Alrighty Mikey, but just because you asked so very nicely,” And Richie shrugged Eddie off his shoulder to get his footing.

Eddie brushed himself off and scoffed, “You’re lucky I like you, even a _little_ bit. I’ll let you keep your fingers.”

He nipped at the air, pantomiming taking off Richie’s fingers.

There was a pause for silence. Ben put down the book he was reading and addressed the elephant in the room. The big, fat, invisible elephant that sat in the corner of the room waiting patiently to be acknowledged.

“Deadlight’s Day. We’ve been waiting a long time for the red sun to rise.”

Eddie took Richie’s hand and spoke up, “I think I’m ready…. I’m ready.”

“T-T-Thu-There’s the Eddie I know-ow. You are r-ruh-eady. And I have a co-oh-rrection to m-m-ake,” Bill firmly stated.

Puffing on his hookah with one of his arms, he took a few deep drags. He exhaled a revision of a message he had previously given Eddie. The letters were large and clear, with the center letter being red and the others black: L-O-V-E-R.

“Y-You may still buh-be a loser, but n-n-never a coward,” Bill winked.

Eddie bashfully smiled with all the eyes on him, and looked to Richie who returned a cheeky grin. They squeezed their clasped hands inbound partnership. Energy charged between that squeeze, sending fire from Richie’s body to fill Eddie’s.

Vertigo. Unexpectedly, Eddie entered a cleansing vertigo from the flames.

_Time and reality are relative, my son._

He remembered the proposal and the home he ran from where small men with six arms and blue hair didn’t exist. Where rotten royalty couldn’t morph their pearly whites to fangs. Where the Hatter had midnight locks instead of purple. Where his father was dead, dead as doornails, and his mother and possible fiancé muddled his life. _Reality_. But what was reality, really? Who’s to say that dreams aren’t their own reality, and what you cannot and can feel, is not as well? 

_A clock moves the same amount of distance both forward and backwards, son._

Reality was learned to be questioned. Sentiments couldn’t be discredited, experiences not discarded. Whatever world Eddie was enveloped in was his reality, in his head, or not, maybe traveling inexistent in physicality. It must be real, real enough to fear. Love, he thought, could accomplish impossibilities.

There was less fear facing imminent death with another by your side. Death claims every soul in its devouring sheath without exception, in every plane of existence. Greeting the Reaper’s hand may, after all, be a blessing, a calm storm settling. Eddie was ready to put his life on the line in this given reality to end the Queen’s reign for his friends, and for Richie.

Always, for Richie.

Eddie snapped out of his trance, lost from the conversations taking place in front of him as he zoned back into _this_ reality.

“ _Eddie_?” Ben asked.

“Oh -uhm, yes I agree.”

A collective laugh spewed from the party. It was apparent he wasn’t at attention for a deal of the talk for the past few minutes, cocooned in swarming revelation. Richie glided his thumb to massage the top of Eddie’s hand.

“Nothing to agree to, but let’s get your armor suited,” Ben finalized.

“ _Armor_?”

“Trust me, you’re going to want it,” He assured.

He took a silk pouch from one of the table’s drawers and undid its knots. White chess pieces were scattered on a chess board in front of him, and he carefully picked up each one and secured the piece in the pouch. Sixteen contestants: a king, a queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. 

“And E-Eddie, buh-before you go,” Bill started with a smile.

“I-I-I’ll see you on the uh-other s-s-ide.”

Explosions of colored smoke enveloped Bill like silk ribbon, swirling toward the ceiling and fanning out across the room. Shades of the light spectrum crackled through the air of the solar; reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, purples. For the first time, Eddie believed he visibly saw colors from the infrared spectrum dancing as well, as would be the last time. The winds caused by the smoke caused Richie to use free fingertips to keep his top hat secure to his head. With a final zap at the epicenter of the smoke, a blue monarch emerged, weaving around the space. Under Bev’s legs, around Mike’s head, over Richie and Eddie’s hands, and out the cracked window into the red sun’s rays. 

Rubbing his hands together, Ben faced his palms to Eddie and shut his eyes in concentration. The room shook, knocking more books off the shelves and loosely tightened candelabras from the walls, and sheaths of metal wrapped their way around Eddie’s body. In a liquid state, mercury behaves, silver and gold streams fitted to his feet, shins, hamstrings, waist, under the fanny pack, over his chest, arms, and hands. A breastplate solidified, bearing a shining emblem that read “1/7”. The armor allowed for flexible movement and was light in weight if running was necessary. It would absolutely be necessary.

“Spiffy, Eddie,” The January Hare complimented.  

“There’s no time to waste, we must get to the Turtle’s Shell before the Queen does,” Ben ordered leaving the room. 

Behind him, the door slammed shut and locked itself. The window Bill had flown out of crashed into its seal and locked itself, along with the other windows in the room. The carpets and marble floors became porous, seeping a vantablacked goop that began to fill the room from the bottom up. The same viscous liquid bled from the cabinets, and now the walls, filling up the solar even more. Sets of blackened hands reached out of the goop, reaching blindly for alleviation, some latching on to the body parts of the remaining members in the room. They clawed, attempting to drag them down into its depths to join them.

Ben banged on the door and jerked at the doorknob to open it, “ _Guys_! What’s going on in there? _Hello_? Is everything okay?”

But no member could respond. They were frozen in their places, with white lights replacing their pupils. Possessed by the Deadlights, seeing into its infinitely cursed timeline. They could see times in their histories they had wished to forget and leave in the past, now revisiting them as a painful slideshow. Their past mistakes, regrets, fears. And, future mistakes.

Then flashes of others’ gruesome ends.

A tear of an arm and devoured alive, are screams from a boy named Georgie. Shredded in half where entrails spilled, Betty left for dead. Shattered ribs and jaw torn from her face, Veronica lost the ability to shriek. Crack of the neck, as his head was ripped from his body and into a tree, was an Edward.

The same voice traveled through their heads, a message on repeat.

_You’ll float, too._

The liquid sopped through the ceiling, drenching every surface and every person. It pooled to their hips in their state of forced torpor, then to their necks, intruded into their nostrils and lung cavities, above their noggins, and eventually filling the room entirely. Their bodies floated freely throughout the room, lifeless forms at the will of another power.

“Someone answer me, _please_!” Ben screamed from the other side of the door still trying to open it, becoming desperate and haggard.

Black seeped from underneath the door threshold, it rumbled to swell in a convex arch, and he took a few skipped steps backwards to press his back to the opposite wall.

“ _Shit,"_  and he ran from the door.

The door flung open, cementing the doorknob to the outside wall, and the goo viciously poured in a barreling riptide that tumbled throughout the entire castle. With a running start, Ben leaped a great height to grasp on to a chandelier dangling from the ceiling. He watched from above as the clandestine waves filled his castle, swallowing everything in its path; paintings, tables, chairs, even the piano. 

The current subsided, and Ben let go of the chandelier to investigate the room. It was pristinely clean, cleaner than he had left it, with books back in their places, the windows slightly ajar, and all black abyss gone.

But so was Bev, Mike, Richie, and Eddie.  

*          *          *

Marching feet. Hundreds of marching feet shook the ground.

_You’ll float, too._

Eddie ached all over and weakly rolled onto his stomach to cough violently. Drops of black emptied from his lungs and he was on the verge of upchucking the contents of his stomach. The drops tasted of death, and he would have lapped up the entire bottle of pussey liquid that made him grow with joy, over this poison. He lay on a chiseled white square, adjacent to black squares, and diagonal from other white ones. Richie laid on the square to his left, Mike on the square to his right, and Bev to the right of Mike, all coughing up the same black remnants.

Light from the sun in the center of the sky put a red glow on the checkered land, and there was a thick line drawn on the board in front of them, signifying the middle of the Turtle’s Shell. Stone ruins lined parts of the battlefield, that included battered staircases and columns of limestone patched with moss. At the other end, clusters of red and black stomped toward the line inefficient unison, with the Knave leading in front on the same monstrous hound. His arm had been prosthetically replaced, masoned from weathered scrap metal.

They carried above them a throne, sitting a fiery Queen. She blazed from afar, hair a beacon of frenzied flames at the tips.

Getting to their feet, they wiped off any excess droplets sticking to their clothing, or armor. In the square to the left of Richie, a levitating smirk appeared. Then a pair of tan slacks, a ringed tail, a white buttoned up shirt, then tightly curled brown hair that was combed to the sides.

“Sorry I’m late, but here I am. Didn’t want to miss out on any of the _fun,_ ” Stan said through exhausted sarcasm. His nightingales flapped from behind and perched on his shoulders.

“Just in time,” Mike exhaled equally as sarcastic.

“ _Stan,_ ” Eddie earnestly asserted for his attention, remembering the mental note he made earlier.

“ _Eddie,_ ” Stan mimicked.

“I....never got to thank you. Without you, we would’ve never been able to get the sword. We would have stood no chance, _seriously_. You’re uh, a good friend. Thank you,” Eddie smiled.

Stan purred, unaware that it was audible and shrugged nonchalantly, “What else would I be good for? I do what’s right. And Eddie...give her _Hell._ ” He was grinning as well.

They stood as five individuals, against a sea of hundreds.

Without breaking his gaze from the approaching Queen, Richie asked Eddie, “Do you remember yet?” 

“Remember what?”

“My riddle, I’m still waiting on an answer.”

This seemed like the worst time in the world to be pondering a stupid riddle that probably did not even make sense, or have a point. But, Eddie did. He scowled his eyebrows to create carved grooves and excavated his brain for a viable answer. A candle wicked somewhere in the back of his skull.

“Actually, it was _my_ riddle. You tell me, why is a turtle like a paper boat?” Eddie corrected. 

Richie brightly answered, “Because _they need a shell to stay afloat, and have no direction_. Your riddle was always my favorite riddle. It was the only one I couldn’t figure out on my own. My clever Eds.” 

The pounding stomps came to a collective halt at the front of the line splitting the chessboard. The Card Guards stepped into the first position, their lances shoved into the tile to their right. Lifting off of her throne, Penny the Wise abled herself to the line, hair and train of her gown floating behind her, eyes ablaze with orange hatred in their sockets.

“Pardon me Eddie dear, but you look a mess,” She patronized and cackled a harpy’s sharp utterance.  

“Thanks, _so do you,_ ” Eddie retorted with anger. Bev found this wildly amusing and broke out into laughter using the back of one of her knives to wipe away tears of hilarity.

“Wrong move, stupid child. Your heart will be the tastiest meal to date, a _delicacy_ … Let the Ritual of Chüd, begin,” And with a final sneer her transformation was in commencement.

The Queen’s flowing hair ignited into a full head of flames, wicking from the tips. Her glitter heels lifted off of the ground and she raised her palms where they waterfalled the same black liquid from Ben’s solar over the grooves between her clawed fingers, like a fountain. Speaking gibberish of a lost language aloud, her tongue lengthened and split down its center, whipping the air in independent couplets. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and her body cracked and jerked in contortionist folds as she rose higher. Eight spined legs spurted from her back, four on each side. They shredded the back of her dress, shooting to the ground from ten feet above where she hovered. The Queen indulged in an executioner’s avidity, consumed with the ritual’s metamorphosis. Spines lathered in thorns pulsated to sideswipe any victim en route, even her own men. Twitching and prodding the checkered floor, they had homicidal minds of their own. With a shrill scream, her prognathous jowls extended and tore to a greater width, dripping inhuman blood from the tears it made in her flesh. 

She welcomed the pain, invited it in as a polite host. Pain fueled anger, and anger made her strength heighten.

Incisors, canines, molars morphed from pearly whites to a set of elongated fangs, acidic venom dribbling from their ends and cratering the soil where it fell. She panted heavily as the convulsing ceased, and her eyes rolled back to center with a second pair forming above the originals; primed quaternary vantablack sclera pits, focused on Eddie. The carved scars descending down her eyes now slashed through both sets, seeping with red plasma after their expansion. Those eyes were fixated, infatuatedly drunk with the lust of making a kill. Killing Eddie.

This was not a Queen. This was not a being of this world, or any world. This wasn’t a she, a him, a who, or a what. This, this monster?

An _It_. 

“ _Bloody fucking Hell,_ ” Eddie let slip from his lips as he watched It's evolution. He hadn’t blinked once, out of fear that within the millisecond he shut his eyes, he would be dead. Dead as doornails.

One of her arachnid spines tapped at the line separating the chessboard in halves, a specially coded knock to summon a beast from the depths. Checkered plates crumbled and inverted where the line had been, sinking into the opening crevice. Orange light beams shot from the rift, boulders tumbled from the walls of the new cliff, molten lava melted from unsewn seams, and the light became more prominent, blinding even, as it stretched open wider, and wider. It was opening to a size for something of similar shape to slither out of.

In a much deeper and menacing voice than Penny the Wise had ever spoken with, she recited a spell with a doubled tongue striking the air in between syllables, “ _Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Jabberwock Macroverse wgah'nagl fhtagn._ ”

As It spoke the letters atomized, forming a translated sentence over the glowing pit:

_In His House the Macroverse, dead Jabberwock waits dreaming._

The pit purged a sheet of green flames, grazing the entire crevice of the Turtle’s Shell. Lava that flowed in the bottom-most portion of that hell gurgled, awakening the Jabberwock from his cave of hibernating slumber. Yes, there was an entrance to his vault from the Queen’s sewer well, but only she to her knowledge, unaware of Stan in his elusiveness nature, was able to access him through there. Summoning him directly from the Macroverse was the sole entrance the Jabberwock himself could have emerged from.

A furious roar erupted from the pit, and the downbeat of leathered wings brushed the sides of the expanding cliffs. The Jabberwock birthed from the rekindled ashes of the Macroverse, a space as old as time itself, and perhaps even older. Parallel with the green flames, a very much alive Jabberwock vibrating with sadistic energy cast a shadow on the land. Upon his exit, the ground resealed itself.

Monstrously black, except for the green scarred stripe cut into one of his sides, the mutant dragon had burning emerald eyes. They were primeval eyes that had seen tragedy and caused it. They matched the fire he could regurgitate, that destroyed entire civilizations with one whooping gust.

Eddie unzipped the pouch around his waist, retrieving the miniature simul sword. When he pulled it out, it grew in size to be not much smaller than Eddie himself. Electricity buzzed through the core of his bones, sending shockwaves from where he gripped the handle with both hands. Eddie and the sword synced, partners in alliance against a mutual evil. An _It._

The Jabberwock circulated over the card army, spewing a green fire ring around the soldiers. He roared in spurted cries, concluding with batting wings to lower himself next to the Queen.

Richie’s body shook in a paroxysm of wrath.

His fists clenched to draw blood and ignited into ovoid balls of purple flames. They were enraged, impatient combustions of unfathomable heat that were eager for vengeance. His jaw tightened watching the Jabberwock put himself on display, with a vein bulging from his forehead, and his irises darkening from green to crimson chasms that were more menacing than the Deadlight’s Day sun.

The Jabberwock locked on to Richie, growling with satisfied vibrations. He bucked his head, stabbing the air above him with the oversized horns embedded in his skull. Patronizing he was, just like his master.

The Hatter had a mother once.

Maggie was kind, soft-spoken yet cunning, intelligent, and had the same shade of purple locks that Richie had grown. To him, she was an angel that unfortunately grew holy wings too early, becoming his guardian angel. Stolen from this world. 

He knew he would grow wings one day as well, rejoining her company with blissed resurgence.

A small village just on the outskirts of the mountain range surrounding Ben’s castle once thrived peacefully as a society practicing artisan trades and performance showmanship; magicians, painters, sculptors, actors, fortune tellers, _element benders_. When the Queen surfaced and seized power, she summoned the Jabberwock for the first time in thousands of years to burn every hospitable land to cinders, the Hatter’s being one of them. Those who practiced arts were imaginative, a threatening quality for an unrequited tyrant who solely desired control, and they were targeted before others.

_Run my boy, RUN! Before it’s too late, you must go!_

With a grieving kiss to his mother’s cheek, he ran. His mother was strong, willful, and he expected her to flee as of plan to meet him. But, she never did.

He witnessed a green conflagration defile his home and the entire town to silt. A winged gargoyle that darkened the entire sky shattered everything he had once cherished, his beloved mother included. Sitting from a tree branch atop a hill miles away, he felt the heat of the flames destroy his immediate world.

The lone survivor of a once prosperous town, he lost his sense of reality, mind esqued from loss and evanescence. He was brilliant, enchanting, but became notoriously mad; the Mad Hatter. Tragedy changes a person, and can ultimately ruin them. But love, from his experience, had the power to heal instilled wounds. Love had the power to heal entire worlds.

 _Eddie_.

This did not exempt his grudge, however, and upon seeing the Jabberwock since his youth, the Mad Hatter slipped from more of life’s hold. He wanted to impale the Jabberwock on sharpened spikes, posted in front of the Queen’s manor with fireworks and a banner reading:

_I’m coming for your head, your pet is fucking dead!_

Eddie, feeling a proximous heat to his left, turned to Richie. He had never seen him so incensed, trapped within fury, with the red irises he’d hoped he’d never have to behold. It was frightening to see an optimistic heart turn sour and lose its naturally cooled temper.

The Queen of Hearts, Penny the Wise, Eater of Worlds, _It_ , gave the order, “Let’s watch them float. Float with us, _swines_. Jabberwock, _kill._ ”

_You’ll float, too._

Absolute chaos broke loose.  

As the Jabberwock prepared a ball of green fire in the back of his throat, Bev had tied a rope to the end of a dagger and threw it to stab and stick in one of the Jabberwock’s eyeballs, blinding that beacon.

Bev’s plan unfolded.

He ceased his attack, thumping from the ground in a panic. He shrieked and lifted the January Hare in his ascent. She climbed up the rope, another dagger in her teeth while dangling midair, preparing to slice the thick hide underbelly of the creature if she got the chance. As Ben had admired since he first encountered the Hare, she was fearless. An insane diamond in the rough.

“Eds, get to the ruins. Trust me,” Richie ensured through gritted teeth.

“Okay, bu-”

“I’ll meet you there, _trust me._ And-”

A spear was thrown in the space between Richie and Eddie’s faces. The Card Guards charged at the standing alone four, who braced themselves for the impact of hundreds of soldiers.

“And, I love you,” He finished with a woeful softness before making his move. 

Richie took off into a sprint and charged his hands together, performed a front handspring that ended in a flip nearly fifteen feet off the floor, grounding himself within the sea of Cards. He ejected a wave of purple flames that set crowds of guards aflame, who dashed for solace in opposite directions.

With the simul sword gripped, Eddie ran for the ruins. The Queen raced over combusting Cards with her spines piercing into the ground after Eddie, jaws watering. He didn’t dare look behind him, running for the ruins as if his life depended on it. And his life did depend on it.

Mike used his jackrabbit speed to dodge the assailing thrusts of lances. Reaching into his neck collar, he retrieved orange orbs that he thrust into the oncoming danger. Explosions erupted and were aimed to protect himself, as well as murder the Card Guards that tried to reach Richie while his back was turned.

The Jabberwock flew close to the ground, with Bev still attached to the end of the rope, taking out lines of soldiers in their path. Severely disoriented from losing an eye, he spit blasts of fire in every direction. She discharged herself, rolling ravenously across the checkered floor. Jumping into an aerial, she hurled a dagger while upside down into the face of a soldier. She hopped on his body to yank it from in between his eyes, and did so with countless others, guffawing with adrenalized exhilaration. A trail of death followed her, bodies abandoned lifeless from knives that had scrambled their brains.

Pouncing on a Card Guard, he said to her while struggling, “A _woman_ , _w-weak_ , what an unwise choice of a soldier!”

“Unwise indeed, for YOU!” She cackled and used a fist to fill his mouth with her blow, taking ahold of his tongue in the process. She yanked it out of his mouth and sliced it off with a dagger while straddling his shoulders.  

The Knave of Hearts preyed from behind, using his claymore to wack at soldiers of his own army to get to her.

A choir of whinnies echoed across the valley. Ben stood in a gleaming chariot reigned by seven pegasuses that each had armored breastplates. Silver was bridled at the front, chomping on her bit in heist. In his hand, he held the sleeve containing the sixteen chess pieces he had stashed earlier. He untied the knots and shimmied it over the side of the chariot. Each piece animated and grew to be as tall as the Queen, fighting with valor for their King.

Shooting arrows from a crossbow, Ben peered through the scope to make careful, and concise shots from above. The Knave had caught up to Bev, who was unaware of his sword being lifted above his head, seconds from cutting her body vertically in half. 

Ben shot a golden arrow through his temples.

Dropping the claymore and toppling to the ground, his bleeding vessel was trampled with his skull bashed in by oncoming stomps. The Knave was once again in a slew of his own blood, but this would be the very last time.

Stan slipped two fingers under his tongue, whistling a tune that could burst eardrums, and stood still with a mischievous smile on his face, arms crossed. A swarm of black wings entrenched over the mountain ridge behind them, cawing. Thousands of black wings.

Ravens from every facet of Derrensland joined the fight, attacking the Queen’s army. They used piercing talons to gouge out eyes, rip out teeth, mutilate faces, shred limbs, eviscerate midsections, and a group of seven ravens could lift a single guard leagues into the air, and drop him to his death. There were casualties amongst the ravens, but their numbers remained strong in retrospect.

“My work here is done,” And Stan sauntered away from the ensuing war, slowly evaporating from view. He was not a fighter, he was an organizer of planned pandemonium. And, he loved watching a fight he helped strategize go in his favor.

_You’ll float, too._

The Jabberwock discharged beams of flames over the army, incinerating a path that sought out Richie. He recognized him from ages ago and wanted him dead. Richie had been one of the few survivors of his desolation, and that was an unacceptable loss. A failure.

Richie ran as fast as his stilted legs would allow, chucking behind him balls of purple fire at his hunter. He ran towards the ruins, after Eddie and the Queen. The Jabberwock swooped down to nip at the back of his trailing swallow-tailed coat, just out of reach, and missed.  

“ _COME GET ME, YA FUCKIN’ MUTANT_!” He yelled as he ran.

Ben circled around the Jabberwock, shooting arrows into the side of it’s head, and all over his body. The blackened sky leviathan roared in frustration and diverted his attention from Richie to Ben.

“ _Go_ Hatter!” Ben shouted from above.

Playing cards flew out of his pockets as Richie sprinted to the ruins. Eddie had to be the one to slay the Queen, but he was going to help by any means possible. Even with his life.

Eddie had climbed up the first limestone staircase he saw in view and hid behind a worn wall, listening for the Queen’s movements. He heard her scaling the underside of the staircase and ran down an exposed corridor. She crawled to the top of a column and lept in front of him.

He slid under her, using the sword to chop off one of her spiny legs. Shrieking in pain, she continued her pursuit. 

A purple fireball hit her in the side of the head. 

“ _Hatter_! Where are you, _fool,_ ” She growled.

“Sorry love, but you were asking for it,” Richie said while leaning against a chiseled fountain from below. Another fireball thrown, taking out a leg on her other side.

She knew she was running out of time. Getting distracted by a loon she could torture later would not be wise. And she was Penny the Wise, the wisest of them all, drowning in excessive hubris.

_You’ll float, too._

Hissing through bared fangs at Richie, the Queen returned in her pursuit of Eddie. She could smell him, and followed his scent to another staircase, a level above the last, until she saw him from below.

“You’ve lost, little boy. Come float. _Come to the Queen._ ”

“Not yet, _bitch,_ ” He antagonized. 

As she crept closer to the ridge, her distorted face morphed into the face of his mother. She looked identical to Sonia, and spoke with the same voice.

“Is that any way to speak to your mother, Eddie Bear you’re hurting my feelings! What would your father think?” 

She crept even closer, with Eddie fixed on his mother’s faux face. He held his ground, but with livid eyes. 

Richie threw another fireball at her, “Don’t listen! _Don’t-_ ”

The Queen shot a bolt of lightning at Richie without breaking conversation. The bolt keeled him to capitulation and shocked his animated carcass into a fleeting curse of painful seizures, leaving him to wriggle on the floor in sobs. The sound of Richie’s cries made Eddie’s heart lacerate, but they would be for nothing if he didn’t focus.

“I’m sorry, Ma. _I’m sorry_ I couldn’t be perfect for you,” Eddie responded, becoming more cross with having to stare at Sonia. Penny the Wise infiltrated dreams and nightmares alike where she could gain insight into one’s weaknesses. Sonia was a concealed source of vulnerability for Eddie, who had mentally leashed him through guilt.

“You should be, you should be _ashamed_ of what you are. My son, the _abomination._ ”

“No I shouldn’t be, and I’ll never be sorry again. _Ever_. You’re wrong, thwarted, blinded with your own self-preservation. You’ve never cared for me. _Never_. You can _rot._ ”

She lunged at Eddie with hungry jowls, spines jutting ahead to pierce through the center of his beating heart and rip it out. Her kill, deranged within reach.

He vaulted off the top of the staircase in front of the Deadlight’s Day sun shining as a metal plated silhouette, shouting with the simul sword raised, “ _You’ll float, too!_ ”

_You’ll float, too._

With a swipe of the sword, Eddie sliced the Queen of Hearts’ head off her neck.

Her severed head floated over the corridor walls and ricocheted down the staircase, crashing to the bottom. The headless body of that monster, that _It_ , smacked the ground with a black river pouring from the cervical gash.

Death came to the valley. Death rid the land of life. She had brought Death with her, trusting His uncredible alliance. But Death now left the valley, requisitioning Penny the Wise with Him in finality. A just, royal double-crossing that laid her to rest for perpetuity. Trusting Death, after all, is the epitome of an unwise resolve.

The Jabberwock shrieked. His summoner, deceased.

Richie ran to Eddie and picked him up in a suffocating embrace, “I knew you could do it, Eds. I just knew it. She had it coming.”

“Oh, and Richie?”

“Hmm, my love?” He buzzed.

“...I love you, too.”

With the Queen’s, _It’s_ , black plasma still trickled on his face, Eddie coveted for Richie’s touch. Both palms magnetized to the sides of Richie’s cheekbones, fastened on his purple freckles. Eddie loved him, was in love with him, mad or not. Real, or imaginary. Richie had speckles of a cosmic gallery, storming nebulas furiously battling through space, and that was okay.

Perfectly okay.

A kiss to their war was all that was needed, keeping them at bay from indulging into a supernova of incendiary destruction. But they couldn’t enjoy their moment long, for the Jabberwock angrily flew across the sky towards their reunion.

“ _Eds..._?” Richie hesitantly asked.

“Yes?”

“Promise you won’t forget me ever again. _Ever._ ”

“How could I possibly forget you?”

“It’s important, _please_. I need you to remember. _Really_ remember,” Richie pleaded with tears welling. He knew something Eddie did not, and since the very beginning.

“Of course, Richie bu-”

“ _No_. Me, the Hatter. _This_ part of me. Please, remember _me,_ ” and there was a desperation looming.

Eddie took a stabilizing breath, preparing himself for a promise he would make with complete confidence.

“I couldn’t imagine letting my best friend stray from my dreams, and my life, ever again. _A ring is just a ring_. I’ll remember, _I promise,_ ” Eddie agreed pressing a kiss to his lips, also with wetness in his eyes.

“I’ll see you soon then, Eds,” Richie cooed.

A door thundered in appearance at the peak of the other staircase, glinting under the red sun. The door had a similar color to the sky. _Cherrywood_.

Eddie knew that door. This must be their way out, and they crossed the ruined courtyard in a dash for the one carved from cherrywood. Up one spiral, down a corridor, up the next case of stairs to the top.

Until there was a massive clamp of jaws.

The door flung open, creating a vacuum effect and sucking in what it could. Eddie’s body was halfway into being pulled through the door’s portal, but when he turned around Richie wasn’t being sucked in as well.

It happened in expeditious time for Eddie. But, in slow motion where every detail was absorbed and remembered.

Richie surrendered to allow his coat to be snatched by the Jabberwock, and he was tossed into the vermilion sky. He rose like a wingless angel, a ludicrous saint ascending into the heavens where his mother patiently awaited, lulling in backwards circumferences that leaked sparks of arduous flames. His top hat, a radiant halo pledging for 1/7.

Seven was a lucky number.

And Richie was one of those fortunate seven, including Eddie. One out of seven, that defied a prime odd of defeat.

A single playing card was held in his fingerless-gloved hand, and he heaved it in fast twirls towards the open door, where it was sucked in effortlessly. A last gift, for Eddie. A final missing piece of Eddie’s first world.

Violet eyes. 

They weren’t green, blue, or red. They were violet as Richie levitated above the Jabberwock, burning with limitless love at Eddie for the last time in this reality. Those eyes couldn’t speak, but they told Eddie _‘It’s okay, Eds. Everything will be okay, I’m here_ ’.

And Eddie heard them.

The Hatter knew this would happen, he always knew what would happen. The Mad Hatter just _knew_ things. He was devout to Eddie, bound to him throughout infinite timelines. To complete the prophecy for peaceful worlds, both the Queen _and_ her champion had to be slain; by Eddie, as well as another. And as always, the Hatter knew what had to be done.

_You’ll only need me for so much longer, too. But, I’ll always be there, always have been little Kasp._

_Soon you’ll realize just that. Just like you found your way back to me here, you’ll find me again._

Hysterical laughter gushed from his lungs, and he threw his head back in a seizure of madness suspended out of gravity, charging his hands. The Jabberwock unlatched his jaws and formed a globe of fire in the back of his throat.

_Purple and green never go together, Richie dear. Entropy would fester, do you want to see that happen?_

Richie bellowed a roar and powerfully expelled spiraling purple flames from his palms, as the Jabberwock shot a green inferno from below. Purple, and green. Their flames met in the center and melded into one arch, becoming dangerously unstable until there was white. Nothing but white, inexplicable light.

A cataclysm. 

Blinded by the eruption of twin furies, Eddie was sucked through the door with it slamming shut as he surpassed the threshold.

* * *

**_*TicTic*_ **

**[1 Tic And All Is Done, I See The Sun]**

Eddie groggily opened his eyes, glimpsing the British sun in the center of the sky. It was almost in the same position where he left it, after plunging into the charmed willow’s wormhole. Laying on the ground his head throbbed, as if he bumped it so hard that he fell unconscious at one point. His clothes were tattered, arms scraped, legs bruised. He took out his pocket watch to read the time: 1 o’clock in the afternoon, nearly an hour after he fell through the hole. As he took out his watch, another article fell out.

A purple joker’s card.

_Purple, and green._

It was the twin card of the green joker that was missing from Richie’s deck after a breeze rudely blew it into the unknown while in the rose garden, ages ago. Eddie knew he would be pleased to see it again.

 _Richie_.

The Richie he would be facing would not be the 6’7” purple locked, fire-spitting cryptid. It would be his Richie, still freckled and needing visioned assistance, but with the black curls and crystallized ocean eyes that he grew up with. The Hatter and Richie were one soul, appearing upon thought and hooded lids. He knew that when he dreamt or transcended to another one of his realities, Richie was there with haste to be at his side. He remembered the Hatter, and always would. As he promised.

But he missed this Richie, missed him, missed him. Childly, joker esque, _human_ , beautiful Richie. _His_ Richie.

_And remember that nonsensical dreams do not make you mad. Not pursuing them, do._

Eddie needed to tell him something, and something that was very important. He made a decision, one that would change the course of how his life would continue. And he needed to tell Richie.

He ran. And ran, and ran, through the forest towards the gazebo where Hell itself awaited. Eddie allowed his instincts to guide him through the brush, weaving with expertise through branches and leaping over fallen trees to get to his destination. A force was leading him, showing him the way. Barreling passed a bouquet of thorny bushes, the clearing was in view.

His feet pounded the ground. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven spurts until he was hit with midday sunlight in an open field. Irises sprinkled themselves throughout the rolling field, something Eddie hadn’t noticed before. The light warmed his skin, and he looked up to see not two moons, but one sun. One sun that would certainly not be intuitively spying on him and reading his thoughts from a dream, from what he knew.

A group of gasps expelled from the mouths of a hundred partygoers. They were in the same spots Eddie had left them, gathered around an abandoned proposal from a runaway groom. Millionaire trophy wives fanned their faces, and their adulterous husbands huffed in shock of Eddie’s reappearance.

“There he is! EDDIE, EDDIE GET BACK HERE!” Myra shouted in her highest voice yet.

Gulping audibly, Eddie walked heavy feet back to where the Hydra and his mother stood waiting for him with angry expressions. On his way, he picked one of the irises, placing it in his vest pocket. He then adjusted the pouch around his waist instinctively, shifting it to a comfortable position.

Looking down he mumbled to himself, “Holy shit the pouch, _it’s still here._ ”

Upon approaching the gazebo, his mother waddled in her fastest capability to smother him. She wrapped pudgy arms around his neck, causing him to wheeze for oxygen.

“Eddie Bear, what in blazes- _Your face_! Where are your _pants_? These shorts, they’re despicable, where on _Earth_ did you go?" Sonia asked with conceited concern, tinged with annoyance and judgment. This was her day as well as Eddie’s, and he was ruining it with his impulsivities.

_Where on Earth did you go?_

Earth was not a planet from where he returned. He returned from an insane asylum convict’s unbolted Pandora’s Box that was questionably a more safe haven than where he was now.

Eddie looked a mess, and it was obvious. Hair disheveled and sticking up in strange directions, and bottom lip busted open down the center with dried blood cauterizing the wound. His body may have been mangled, but his mind was obscenely clear.

“It’s a long story, Ma,” Eddie responded coldly and with an absent mind.

“Well, I think your _fiancé_ deserves an explanation don’t you think?” Sonia argued.

Pushing himself apart from his mother, he looked directly into her eyes and confirmed, “You’re right, Ma. _He_ does.”

Eddie walked to the front steps of the gazebo and sought out a pair of aquamarine pearls, dressed with horn-rimmed glasses, on the face of a freckled man wearing a top hat.

 _Richie_.

His eyes scanned the crowd, desperately searching for Richie, ignoring the panicked squeals of Myra and his mother behind him. The only other recognizable face he saw was Wentworth’s, who appeared ruminating in troubled thought. Went tilted his head to the left, towards the courtyard gardens.

Richie was missing from the crowd, and in a place where he was struggling to find an inner peace.

After watching the love of his life forcefully have to propose to a descendant of Satan, and then escape into uncharted forest, perhaps a smoke was needed. A puff of tobacco here, a puff there. He thought of going after Eddie, he did, and he most likely could have caught up with him. But then again, in Eddie’s shoes, he too would have hurled himself into nothingness for a while to regain sanity of thought and grasp on life. Eddie may have needed the time to get lost and find his way again. Maybe not the way he initially planned for, but a way that would guide him to where he ultimately wanted to be.

Myra tugged at the back of Eddie’s vest in a last attempt to reel in a lost cause, “Eddie, _honey_ , you’re making a huge mistake. You love me, _remember_?”

Eddie turned his head to face her with commanding dominance, “I’ve never loved you, Myra. Never have, and never will.”

He then gave his attention briefly to Sonia, “And Ma, I lost the ring. Probably for the better anyway, I don’t think it’s really Richie’s style.”

Sonia shook with rage and reached to grab Eddie, but he took off into the crowd towards the gardens. If Richie was anywhere on this property he would be in the maze of white roses, telling his jokes to the wind as an audience.

Eddie didn’t bother with manners or being polite, he pushed through the crowd knocking aside every person in his path. Entrepreneurs, inventors, art patrons, and their cowering wives. If they didn’t move, he pushed passed them without regret. He would have pushed passed their children as well if they were present.

Eddie surpassed the crowd that tumbled to get out of his way, as he ran through the rod iron entrance gates of the garden. Richie was bound to be in here. Somewhere. 

As he wandered through the garden hedges, a trio of nightingales flew over his head singing tunes of whistles and chirps in choired synchronicity. They spun and braided throughout the air in a succinct fluidity; calculated and practiced. _Familiar_.

He turned corners, corridors that didn’t move upon seconds past, and a marble bench that he may have sat one time. Who could be sure?

 Amidst the hedges, he made a questionable decision. Dropping his body, he crossed his legs and closed his eyes, listening. He listened for the wind, cricket wings sliding together, grass ruffling. Pulling out his pocket watch, he listened to the tics one after the other for answers as an old friend had taught him to do so. He knew well enough, an answer would come.

Twenty-seven tics before an answer came.

He tripped under his feet to hurriedly skip around the left corner, then the right corridor, then another right. Left, right, right. 

A spherical enclosure was the center of the garden, hoisting in the middle a grand fountain of a woman, a Queen, with long straight hair to her hips, and roses down the front of her gown. Water cascaded down her raised palms, as she sneered into the plaza. Her eyes, like the portraits in Myra's manor, followed you. But, with an orange glow.

A man sat at the fountain’s edge, flicking spare coins into its circulating water. Some weren’t even coins, they were pins and random trinkets from the depths of his pockets. The black of his outfit, hair, and mood greatly contrasted the white marble he sat, along with the paleness under his top hat. 

Eddie cleared his throat.

“ _Richie._ ”

Richie lost his balance and had to use the centerpiece of the fountain to keep him from falling straight into it. He was not expecting any voice to greet him, let alone _that_ voice.

“ _Eds?”_

Eddie ran into him with a tight hug, nuzzling his head into the nook of Richie’s armpit. He smelled vaguely of smoke, and of peppermint. It was common for Richie to suck on a peppermint candy after he smoked, wanting to mask the odor with something sweeter, especially for Eddie.

“Eddie what happen- _fuck_ , your lip,” Richie raised his hand to swipe his thumb gently over Eddie’s busted lip, with great concern written on his face.

“It’s nothing really, kinda, uh, got lost in the forest,” Eddie said with a pained chuckle. Explaining his afternoon, or past few days, would be a story for another time, and hopefully wouldn’t land him in the looney bin. At least he knew Richie wouldn’t be the one to send him there.

Richie kissed his forehead, both cheeks, his nose, then his bottom lip, keeping a hand in the divet of Eddie’s lower back. It may have stung a little bit, but Eddie would rather feel the sting than not have Richie’s lips on his own. His lips were a dose of medication, the good kind of sting that could heal.

Love had the power to heal worlds.

“I knew you’d come back to me. How could you stay away from this?” He said wiggling his eyebrows.

“Trying to make me change my mind?” Eddie said playfully, reciprocating Richie’s eyebrow movements.

“I kid, I kid. Plus, you leave me again, I think I just might die,” And Richie let out a dramatic sigh, letting his body fall to the floor. He squirmed on the lawn, gripping at his heart and faking a morbidly comedic fatality. His glasses flew off his face, next to Eddie’s feet.

Eddie pinched his lips and tried his best to not crack a smile, until the act of trying not to laugh made him break character, letting loose loud giggles. Eddie picked his specks from the ground and tossed them back to Richie.

“You really are a Mad Hatter. Completely bonkers, I’m afraid.”

“Mum used to call me that....” Richie grinned fondly at Eddie, who knew this piece of information. He hadn’t heard that nickname verbalized in years. Boy, did he miss his mother.

Eddie smiled and spun the purple joker’s card from his pocket to land perfectly on Richie’s chest.

Richie stumbled to his feet and did an ecstatic jig, “My card! Wh-where did you find this, I’ve been looking everywhere for it!”

“I had some help, but ultimately...you led me to it,” And Eddie took Richie’s left hand and gingerly kissed his knuckles. He plucked the iris he had put in his vest pocket and tucked it behind Richie’s ear as the Hatter had done for him.

As Richie, had done for him.

“A flower? _Por moi_? I’m being spoiled today, what did I do to deserve such treatment from _the_ Edward Kaspbrak,” Richie said while batting his eyelashes.

“You’ve led to show me parts of this world I couldn’t have ever imagined. I missed you the moment I left, you know, even the annoying parts of you. And, I found parts of you on my way. I never knew I could ever love someone so much, as I love you,” He continued. 

“Well looky here, there’s something we can agree on. My _sun_ , my _stars_ , my _moon,_ you stole my heart little Kasp, but I suppose I’ll let you keep it,” Richie softly sang.

“We deserve happiness, Richie. There’s no one else out there better for me, especially not Myra. Which is why there’s something I have to ask you, and I should have asked a long time ago.”

With Richie’s hand still in his own, Eddie got down on one knee. Richie’s jaw hewn, and his eyes began to water; aquamarine whirlpools that glinted from the side as an illusioned violet, especially while glazed with moisture.

“ _I’ll give you my eternity, Until my watch tics its last, You see me as I am. I’ll return to you, from wherever how vast,”_  Eddie recited after easily memorizing it the first few times he read the words. The mantra embedded itself into his mind, never to be forgotten. When called to his next life amongst the stars, Eddie was definite that this poem would be chiseled onto his tombstone as his memorialized epitaph. They weren’t even his own words, but they were words conceived for him and him only.

Richie knew this was his poem that he wrote for Eddie one gloomy night in his study, the same night he found out about the proposal Eddie would have to go through with. He wanted to string carefully deciphered designations together, for Eddie. Words that did not contain any joke, any sarcasm, only words that would express to him how deeply he felt, and words Eddie could read to himself any unfortunate evening while in the same bed with his sleeping wife, for comfort. Something written down, a permanent inked reminder that even if he was not there physically with Eddie, he was sending infinite love at every moment.

“ _Eds...._ ” Richie said with a trembling breath.

“You’re the only person I want to spend my life with, and who deserved to wear that ring, that _stupid_ ring. Every moment living that lie with what _they_ wanted, are moments wasted, and I would honestly rather be dead.”

Squeezing Richie’s left hand, he finally asked the question he had been itching to, “ _Richie & Eddie, Forever & Always ....._Will you marry me, Richie?”

Richie yanked Eddie from the ground, slinking an arm around his waist into a twirl, where the other hand cupped his chin as he kissed his new fiancé with passionate fire. His bow tie would have ignited, if humanly possible by emotion.

They tangled in a conversation of tongues, telling of sweet convections. Both men had tears falling down their cheeks, creating a single stream that dripped in between their lips. These tears were not from a melancholy sadness, or frustration ridden in anger, but from newly relieved freedom. Their love hidden in secrecy was no more, now out for others to behold and interpret. Scornful eyes will come and go, but living their lives free of the facade they exhibited to the public for so many years, since they were young, was liberating. A freedom to be themselves.

Speaking into Eddie’s mouth Richie told his obvious answer, “‘Twould be my absolute pleasure.”

They physically stood in the courtyard, but their euphoric spirits lifted them into clouds of pink plumes, that smelled of magnolias and reflected blanketed stars and twinned moons. Floating across them, together, in love and assent.

“ _Tarrant_? _Eddie_?” A voice called for them just around the bend of one of the garden corridors.

“ _Went_?”

“ _Father_! We’re by the fountain!” Richie yelled back to his father.

Wentworth jogged into view with a sly smile, approaching an elated, newly engaged Eddie and Richie.

“Edward, that was quite the stunt you pulled earlier. _Although_ I must say, I would have done the same thing, but never returned,” Went said as he glanced at Eddie’s and Richie’s twined fingers. 

“Yeah, well, I had some unfinished business I needed to come back for.” Eddie explained looking up at Richie with loving, doe eyes.

Tilting Richie’s hat to be skewed off his forehead, Wentworth gave him a kiss to the front of his curls, then gave one to Eddie on the top of his head.

“You two belong together, Frank and I knew it since you were lads. The bond you share… it’s a rarity. So, protect one another. The world is a cruel, unforgiving creature. Use your love to change that, rid it of some hate.”

“Thanks, Pops,” Richie said with a fierce blush. Eddie also sprouted a cherry red blush.

“Go now boys, get yourselves out of this place, and don’t look back. Too many of us choose convenience out of fear over how we feel, losing the opportunity for a lifetime of genuine happiness. I’m _proud_ of you, and I love you both.”

“And, don’t you _dare_ forget to write me and visit,” Went demanded, and winked at them.

Richie knowingly nodded and turned to Eddie with optimism, “You ready to leave this hellhole? Start new?”

“With you? Absolutely.”

Another cataclysm; the birth of a new era blooming from ash.

Off they went. They ran out of the garden gates, past the muttering crowd that was on the other side, through the mansion’s stained glass doors, and into the forest towards the nearby docks at the ocean’s edge. They did so, hand in hand, chasing an uncertain future of where they would go and what would happen next. But, they howled with laughter as they escaped into ancient woodland giants because they would be doing so together. Their new journey began today, this moment in time, with blank pages in a little leather-bound book waiting to be filled except for the first three. Filled with memories to be made over a lifetime, the good, the bad, and everything in between.

_I need you to know those pages will be filled, that’s what I’m here for._

_Everyone has a story they want to sell, but yours is one that’s worthy to tell. I’m glad your stubborn ass found your way back to me._

Words echoed from another reality, proven to be just as true here as they were there. A blue monarch followed them for a ways through the trees soaring alongside them, above them, and zooming ahead with the warm breezes.  

Eddie kept his promise.

He would have never been able to forget the Hatter— even if he tried.

Eddie held his hand now, escaping to open ocean. Eddie lowered a knee, asking for his hand in marriage. Eddie bloodily embraced him as a shadowed gargoyle flew to their demise. Eddie rode a silver winged beast, safely gated in front of his chest and protected between his thighs. Eddie cheerily waltzed atop china with him, where specialized brews piped hot. Eddie was gifted a book small enough to be a house elf's by him, containing poetic scriptures. Eddie was lovingly twirled by him in secrecy amidst white rose gardens, cradled in his arms. Eddie anonymously received smitten sonnets throughout his teenage years by him, until his identity was unexpectedly disclosed through giddy mistake. Eddie as a child was reverently fortified by him during late hours of nightfall, when the moon rose full and eclipsed.

An It used to hanker him with ghoulish paralysis in sleep, haunting and incriminating.

But alongside Eddie's bed, a revered set of adoring tide pools sparkled with protection behind thickly rimmed glasses of magnified currents, whom used to speak with a comical lisp in their youth. And they guarded him. 

The Hatter had been there the entire time. Always had been. 

Richie and Eddie: childhood playmates, best friends, each other’s protector, lover, soulmate. It was written in ink, promised in touch, and soon with an eternal vow.

Richie and Eddie, forever and always.

* * *

**_*Tic*_ **  

_The sky suits blue_

_Grasses shimmer green_

_Tides retract foam_

_Feathers, starlings preen_

 

_But is upside down, rightside up?_

_A shadowed voice, my own?_

_Who’s to wonder, none will see_

_Alas, there is no time zone_

 

_I may not clearly see_

_But my vision pleads true_

_That what I touch is real_

_And what touches me too_

 

_A timeless fear seizes_

_And love is yours to choose_

_But don’t pursue the wrong one_

_A ruleless game, you could lose_

 

_No matter what reality_

_Madness is a charged matter of same_

_Entities swirl a match_

_To rekindle a sworn flame_

 

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr: hypnoidvoid](https://hypnoidvoid.tumblr.com)
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> [Artwork by @tozier-boy](https://hypnoidvoid.tumblr.com/post/176026655336/till-my-watch-tics-1)  
> [Artwork by @liliemm](https://hypnoidvoid.tumblr.com/post/176027433136/liliemm-eddie-in-wonderland-for-hypnoidvoid-s)  
>    
> Thank you to my lovely friends who beta read and supported me in the months it took to write this story (Joy, Katie, Amy, El, Lili, Jo, Shannon), I truly love each one of you. AND for creating some incredible pieces of artwork that nearly made my heart set itself on fire from how much I love them. Shout at me in the comments, I'd love to hear what everyone thinks!


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